


Mirror Image

by leahalexis



Series: Mirror Image 'verse [1]
Category: Alias
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-24
Updated: 2005-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 49,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahalexis/pseuds/leahalexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sydney wakes up in Lauren's body, mid-season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1, Act 1

She didn't know how, but Sydney woke up kissing Michael Vaughn.

"Lauren," Vaughn—she was trying to call him Vaughn now in her head, only Vaughn—said against her lips, "I appreciate the thought, but I haven't even brushed my teeth."

"Sorry," she said automatically (so much to apologize for these days: her memory lapses, her feelings, her inability to just forget what she'd forgotten), sitting back on her heels, tucking her hair behind her ears and only then registering  _Lauren?_

"You don't need to—" Vaughn started to say, but she interrupted him.

"No, you're right," she said, and it was Lauren's voice. She forced herself to smile. "I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be right back."

 _So this is what Lauren wears to bed,_  Sydney thought to herself, looking at the other woman's reflection in the mirror. Or at least what she wore to bed last night—one of Vaughn's old dress shirts. Sydney felt pained as she realized it might have been one she'd worn herself once, going to the kitchen for ice cream between bouts of sex. But she never filled it out quite as well; there was a voluptuousness to Lauren that Sydney, in her coltishness, never had, even before she lost her baby fat, before intelligence training honed her awkward angles razor sharp. Lauren's legs were lithe and creamy below the shirttails, her hips full and curved against the fabric.

Pulling back Lauren's blond hair with a clip she found in the top drawer, Sydney washed her face, closing her eyes against the water she splashed over her skin. Keeping them shut, she went over, carefully, the events of the previous evening—the last thing she remembered. (And wasn't this familiar?)

She'd returned late from another Rambaldi-related mission, had a glass of wine, crawled into bed. It probably wasn't the wine—it was a fresh bottle, one she'd bought on a whim on her way home—so it must have been something with the mission. With Rambaldi, all things appeared to be possible. She hated that man. With a vengeance that was starting to rival her feelings for Arvin Sloane. Couldn't he ever just leave her the fuck alone?

 _Milo Rambaldi turned you in Lauren,_ she told herself sternly.  _Deal with it and get on to figuring out how._

Okay. Last night. Or rather, the night before. Budapest.

The artifact, a slate black, oblong disk, had been under the usual excessive lock and key—dauntingly secured but not quite as secured as its owner had thought. Earlier in the day, posing as Sabrina Addison, potential home owner, Sydney (in a pastel silk sweater set, wool pants, pearls, and a neat ash blond wig pulled into a ponytail) had been shown the high security property and memorized the code the realtor hadn't even tried to hide as she typed it into the key pad. The complex's blueprints weren't available anywhere—a closely guarded secret the complex bragged about and the designer had been killed long ago in exchange for—but Sydney mapped the layout in her head as she made the appropriate noises over the lush courtyards, the amenities, the security details, and unique systems each individual unit had standard, with of course the freedom to upgrade in any way the owner saw fit. The model Sydney was shown turned out to be right next to her target's; he smiled condescendingly at her as he passed, and then turned to ogle her ass. The realtor beamed at him, chattering in his wake about how honored they were to have him there, trying to impress the very wealthy Ms Addison with the level of the complex's clientele.

Sydney returned that night, avoided security, broke into the show model, and cut a hole in the wall that separated her from what should have been the room holding the disk. Instead, it was the target's bedroom.

"Wh—?" he tried to say, understandably startled.

"Hi neighbor," she said, and shot him with a tranquilizer dark. He slumped back.

She found the artifact in a rather creative desk safe in the study, thanks to one of Marshall's scanners, concealed in the surface of the desk under his state of the art but remarkably ugly desktop computer. She lifted it out of the case it was stored in and deposited it in the bag she carried strapped to her waist.

Wait.

She rewound a bit. There was dust on the disc—she'd assumed it was just a mark of its age, that it had perhaps been stored, previous to its recent owner's acquisition, somewhere less sanitary than an ice cave or a leather-bound case. But perhaps it wasn't. Still, she'd been wearing gloves. But—oh—she'd rubbed the sweat off her mouth after the close shave of her escape. That must have been it.  _Damn it._  It was entirely illogical, but it was still the least illogical of any of the other explanations that came to mind.

She faced herself—she faced Lauren—in the mirror. First step was to go out there and tell Vaughn. Second step was to call the CIA and get them working on whatever the hell had happened to her. Third step was to find her body, and see if Lauren was there. Oh yeah. Lauren was going to  _love_  this.

But when Sydney opened the door, Vaughn was gone. There was a note on the bedside table: "Went for a run. See you at lunch? Love, Michael."

Okay, step one thwarted. On to step two. She reached for Lauren's cell phone—and it rang.

Cautiously, she lifted it to her ear. "Hello?"

"Ms. Reed," an accented male voice greeted her smoothly over the line. British, with an echo of Ireland. She knew that voice:  _Sark_.

Something was remarkably not right here. Beyond the obvious. Why was Sark calling Lauren? How did he have her NSC number?

"What?" she asked, choosing caution over threats.

"Just calling to confirm our plans for this evening."

"This evening?"

"Tedious, darling," Sark drawled. "Or is loverboy still there? I thought your video feed showed him on his way out the door five minutes ago."

"He went for a run," Sydney said.

"Keeping in shape for you, I presume. Or perhaps for the lovely Ms. Bristow?"

"Goodbye, Sark."

"Till this evening at the Bellvue, Ms. Reed," he said, and she could hear the smirk. "I do hope your husband won't be waiting up."

He disconnected, and she put down the phone.

This couldn't be the same world she had gone to sleep in the night before. Something must have happened. Something other than the body switch. This whole thing must be a hallucination, a . . . a . . . she didn't know what. But Lauren was meeting Sark for dinner at the Bellvue. Sark was calling Lauren "darling."  _Lauren was working with Sark._

Sydney's head spun. She felt ill. So she picked the phone up and did what any normal person would do under the circumstances: she called her father.

"Jack Bristow," he answered, and Sydney felt the prick of tears.

"Dad."

There was a long pause. "Ah, Sydney?"

"Dad, I know. I sound like Lauren.  _I woke up in her body_."

She heard the muffled sound of his hand covering the phone, his voice saying, "One moment, Marshall," and his footsteps, a door shutting, and then: "Tell me what happened."

"I don't know what happened," she said in a low voice, panic starting to rise now. "All I know is that I went to bed in my apartment and when I woke up I was kissing Michael. I went to the bathroom, and I was Lauren. I think . . . I think it was the Rambaldi artifact I retrieved yesterday."

A pause. "I'll contact Kendall, see if—"

"Wait, Dad, no. There's more. Lauren got a phone call this morning. It was Sark. They're meeing tonight, at the Bellvue. Dad, I think Laren's working with Sark."  _Dad, I think Lauren's sleeping with Sark,_  she thought but didn't say.

"Meet me in twenty minutes at Nieto's."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Be careful."

 _Someday,_  Sydney thought,  _I'd like to have a conversation with him that he doesn't feel he has to end with that._

She didn't shower. Undressing was bad enough; the idea of washing Lauren's body was too much to even begin to consider. She found underwear and a bra in the top drawer, and bypassed the lace for a pair of black cotton. She pulled on black pants and a dark gray turtleneck hanging in the closet, and a sensible pair of dress boots. She brushed Lauren's hair and teeth, fastened the blond waves back with the other woman's purse, cell phone tucked into the front pocket.

It took her a few moments to remember what Lauren's car looked like, and a few more to find it in the covered lot.

Her father was sitting at the nearly empty bar when she arrived.

"Ms. Reed," he said to her. She wanted him to hug her—she could really use a hug—but of course he couldn't. She could even smile at him the way she wanted to.

"Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Bristow," she said instead.

"Can I get you anything?" the bartender asked them.

Jack looked at her. "Shot of vodka," he ordered.

"I don't need a drink, Dad," she said under her breath as the bartender poured and placed the glass on the bar.

"It's not for you." He threw the shot back and grimaced as he swallowed. "Lauren prefers a good Merlot."

He pushed the glass back towards the bartender. "We'll take a table, if that's all right."

The bartender nodded. "I'll get Charlie from the back."

"My God, Sydney," Jack said after they'd sat down and he'd pulled out the bug killer that passed as a pen. "This is . . ."

"Tell me about it." She stared miserably into the glass of water the waiter had brought. She looked up at him. "I don't know what to do. Not just . . . not just about this. About Lauren and . . . Sark. How long has she been working with him? Is she Covenant? And what happens when Michael—"

"First things first," he said briskly. "We need to determine whether Lauren is in the same situation you are. If she is, she may have already spoken to her superiors, or to Sark. I'll contact Kendall about the artifact. We'll keep this from the rest of the department at least until we discover Lauren's whereabouts."

"And I'll play Lauren? Dad, I can't go into work like this."

"Of course not. Call in and take the day off. I'll tell Dixon the NSC has asked you to fly up this evening. Have lunch with Vaughn. And don't tell him."

"Oh God," Sydney said.

"We may have a remarkable opportunity here. Vaughn could be in on this. We can assume  _nothing_."

"I know," Sydney said. "I just—hate this."

"I know, sweetheart," Jack said. Then his phone rang.

"Jack Bristow." His face was impassive as he listened. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he said, and disconnected. "You've been found unconscious in your apartment," he said. "I have to go."

He snapped the pen shut. "I'll let Dixon know about your obligations," he finished formally. Then, lower, "I'll be in touch."

She nodded, shook his hand, collected her things, and left.


	2. Part 1, Act 2

She spent the rest of the morning out. She walked the dock down by the water, listened to street musicians, browsed numbly through shops. She couldn't stomach the idea of going back to Lauren and Vaughn's apartment. Sometimes she had, in the last few months, wished she were Lauren, but actually  _being_  her was an entirely different cup of tea, she thought as she sipped from the one cupped in her hands and waited for Vaughn to join her at what she knew was he and Lauren's usual restaurant. This was reality, skewed as it was. And she was about to lie to the man she still loved: she was about to pretend to be his wife.

"Hey," Vaughn said as he took the chair across from her. "You weren't at our table."

"I felt like a change," Sydney answered, starting to feel sick all over again. "Hello yourself, darling."

She leaned over and kissed his cheek the way she'd watched Lauren do a hundred times, smelled his aftershave and felt the sandpaper of his hastily shaven skin, and forced herself to press her lips only briefly, forced herself not to breakdown and start sobbing his name.

Instead, she smiled at him. "I'm glad you made it."

"I'm sorry I'm late," he said, breaking her gaze and pulling the napkin off the table and over his lap. "It was Sydney. Did you hear?"

"Hear?"

"Weiss found her unconscious in her apartment this morning when he went to pick her up. Her door was open."

He sounded concerned for her, she realized, and it seized up her heart. But of course he'd be concerned. It wasn't as if he didn't care about her. He just didn't love her anymore. Not the way he loved Lauren.

"Is she all right? Was she hurt?"

"She's still unconscious, but physically unharmed. No bruises. No cuts. Just some swelling around the mouth. The doctors think she's been drugged."

"Oh my God." Sydney closed her eyes, relief and worry both washing over her. Warmly, she joked, "I suppose I can forgive you under the circumstances."

Vaughn studied her. "You aren't upset."

Sydney started to feel uneasy. She lifted her water glass and took a precise sip. "No. Should I be?"

"Usually when I mention Sydney—"

"Michael!" Sydney exclaimed, scandalized. "Of course not! What a horrible thing to say!"

Did he really expect Lauren would be angry over this?  _Would_  Lauren have been upset? Wasn't it enough he was hers?

"Because you know I love you," he said, brow tight and earnest, hand reaching for hers. "You know I'm committed to making this work."

She made herself smile at him, then took back her hand. "Do they have any idea who would have done this to her?"

"So far, none," Vaughn answered. "There are some theories, mostly revolving around the Covenant, but nothing we can go on. They're hoping she'll wake up soon, and will know something that can help. Jack thinks it might have something to do with the Rambaldi artifact she brought in yesterday."

"The disk," Sydney prompted, and her stomach sunk at how little out of character it must have been for Lauren to press for more information—Vaughn continued to talk easily, filling her in on the details of the disk: the dust, the tests they'd run, what they'd found so far. She wondered if it was this easy for her mother, betraying her father.

"So the dust is an entirely unknown compound," she said when he had finished.

"Entirely. A Rambaldi special. They're scouring the manuscript pages we have now to see if they can find anything there."

"Keep me updated, darling," Sydney said. She hated when Lauren called him darling. "I have to leave for Washington tonight, but—"

"I know, Jack mentioned it. Which I thought was odd."

It thrilled her to see the slight wariness glint in his eyes— _see through her, see through me_ —but she had to dispel it, of course.

"I saw him this morning. The NSC had some questions they wanted answered about his ex-wife."

Vaughn relaxed visibly, and laughed. "I bet he was thrilled with that."

"He was more accommodating than I would have thought," she answered. "He was almost charming, actually."

"That must have been unnerving."

"Quite a bit," she answered, and smiled again.

They exchanged the general sort of chit chat as they waited for the food they ordered to arrive—discussed a possible vacation together, speculated about Marshall and Carrie's baby. It was almost too much for Sydney to bear. They were so easy with each other. Was it because she was Sydney, not Lauren? Or was this just them, Lauren and Vaughn? She was doing a competent job of being the other woman, but she wasn't perfect, she'd slipped, been herself—been  _Sydney_ —several times, and he hadn't caught on. Couldn't he tell the difference? Or, for all his talk of having gotten over her, past her, had he really only moved on to a safer replica, and that was why he hadn't noticed?

He paid the check and insisted on walking her to her car, though she protested.

"I had a really good time," Vaughn said to her as they stopped at her car door. As if it had been a date.

"I did, too," she said, stopping herself from tucking the hair behind her ears, smiling coyly instead.

"It hasn't been like this for a long time," he continued, seriously, and she felt tight in the chest.

 _Oh, Michael_ , she thought, and was so busy thinking it she missed the advance warning that would have allowed her to dodge his kiss.

His mouth was just how she remembered it, though the angle was slightly different—Lauren was an inch or two shorter—and she clung to his jacket, eyes squeezing shut. His lips opened against hers and she sighed into him, tasting him, pressing Lauren's body to his and wishing it was her own.

When they broke apart, she was breathing heavily and he was grinning.

"See you when you get back," he said, and kissed the top of her head.

She was still standing there when Lauren's cell rang. The number was Sydney's father's.

"Dad?" she answered, still dazed.

"I found Mr. Sark's Bellvue. A plane is waiting for you."


	3. Part 1, Act 3

Jack explained as they drove. Since Sydney’s body had been unconscious since early that morning, it was unlikely that Lauren had been in contact with anyone at all. Therefore they had at present a remarkable opportunity to find out what Sark and the Covenant were up to, as well as determine the true affiliation of Lauren Reed. Not to mention, though neither of them had said it aloud, a chance to learn more about what the Covenant had wanted with Sydney.

“You’ll be going in with minimal backup,” he detailed with his usual business-like efficiency, and she interrupted to ask, “Who?”

“Me,” he answered after a moment.

“That should be enough,” she said, thankful all over again that whether she was Sydney Bristow, Julia Thorne, or Lauren Reed, her father was always there for her. “Go on.”

“The Bellvue is the name of a hotel in Anchorage, a former front company for the defunct Alliance,” he told her. “The hotel is currently under suspicion of Covenant affiliation.”

Sydney processed the information. “Whose intel is that?”

When Jack answered, his tone warned against any reply she might have had. “Your mother’s.”

She would go in as Lauren: no disguises, no weapons other than a shoulder harness and the microphone that would be embedded in the replica of Lauren’s wedding ring waiting for her at the gate. She’d be bluffing her way through, something she’d done often enough—and with a significant amount of success recently, with Simon—but never with someone who knew her as well as Sark. Simon had known Julia but not Sydney. Sark knew Sydney  _and_  Lauren. But then, so did Vaughn, and he hadn’t noticed the difference.

Her father would be able to hear her, but she wouldn’t be able to hear him.

When the plane landed, she transferred to a town car, which drove her from the airport to the hotel. Through the tinted windows she could see shadows of the city outside—she wondered why Sark had chosen this place over all the others in the world, if indeed this had been his choice, and not Lauren’s, or the Covenant’s.

When the car stopped she pulled Lauren’s suit jacket on, then dismissed the driver as she stepped out, phone in hand.

“Ready,” she said into it, sliding the dark glasses from her face with her free hand. What good was a disguise she didn’t use? Headlights glared behind her, and the hotel was lit up like a Christmas tree store.

“I’m pulling up behind the building now,” Jack replied, voice even. “Proceed.”

She disconnected Lauren’s cell, and tucked it into her bag.

The walk up the front plaza was long and open; businessmen in dark suits and long wool coats gave her glances she ignored, following a direct path to the entrance through the sparsely populated square. Lauren was always businesslike at work. Direct. To the point. That would surely be consistent, no matter which employer she reported to.

She pushed through the double doors to a rush of heat. The crisp chill of the wind gave way to mellow warmth. She smiled at the doorman and moved into the lobby. The bar, where she could just see the artfully ruffled blond top of Sark’s head, was tucked in towards the back. He stood out, looked out of place. As, she assumed, did she. But she wasn’t dressed for anyone here—the doorman, the concierge, the tourists and temporary businessmen folded into chairs, laptops humming. She was dressed for him.

She knew the moment he spotted her. His gaze, unfocused, sharpened momentarily, and he lifted his glass: wine, of course, and red. He was predictable to the point of foolhardiness, and she found herself absurdly comforted. This was only Sark. Nothing new.

“Good evening, Ms. Reed,” Sark greeted her cordially, a tilt to his head that made her feel dissected, rawly appreciated,

“Julian,” she returned crisply, coolly.

And he inclined his head as if to concede the point to her. Otherwise, his face remained neutral.

“Shall we proceed, or would you like something from the bar?”

She weighed her options. She was safer here, in sight of too many patrons for even Sark to act, but unlikely to get anything she could use.

“I had something on the plane,” she said.

“Excellent.” He laid his largely drained glass on the bar. “On to business, then.” He offered her his arm, and she scorned it.

Right move; he chuckled and followed after her, murmuring, “I see we’re back to this.” She couldn’t, however, stop the hand that pressed lightly to her lower back, guiding her towards the long bank of elevators at the lobby’s rear.

Sydney wondered at the difference between Vaughn’s Lauren and Sark’s: Sark appeared to expect acidity; seemed, in fact,  _charmed_  by it. Suddenly all her previous meetings with him took on a new, extremely creepy dimension. She steeled herself and pushed him further; she needed to see what her boundaries were, how much he would put up with.

“I’m surprised,” she remarked as he pressed the button for sublevel three. “Or have they started building penthouses in the basement?”

It wasn’t her best, but the corners of Sark’s mouth still curved. No hint of annoyance, or suspicion. “Nothing’s too good for my girl.” The doors opened again, on a wide concrete and black piped control room—or the shell of one. It smelled of dust and long disregard, and the walls were a dingy, unwashed gray. “Ladies first.”

She allowed him to guide her again, that same hand light against the fabric of her jacket. She imagined it was a gun pressed there against the small of her back instead. Oddly, that was much less disconcerting. She knew the proper protocol for that.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” she said, turning to him, fingering the replica of the wedding ring Vaughn hadn’t given her. She hoped the reception held up; the mic wasn’t CIA issue, though her father’s contacts were reliable, their work top-notch. “Why here?” 

Sark shrugged, something elegant that barely ruffled the line of his shirt, an isolated movement of a single shoulder. “You said you hadn’t been here in a few years, and thought of coming back. It’s as good a place as any.”

“Thank you for thinking of me,” she said, and his lips pursed just slightly.

His tone, though, when he spoke, was affectionate and light. “Come now, Ms. Reed, where is the characteristic cut of your tongue? I’ve been in your presence whole minutes and I’ve yet to even bleed a little.”

“You miss my tongue?” she replied coyly, all innocent eyes, and he tipped his head back to laugh. Then he took her hand, pressed his mouth to her palm.

“No more than you miss mine.”

Heat lanced through her, and she couldn’t help stiffening.

“All right?” he asked instantly

“I’m fine. Just a chill.” He smirked, and Sydney took her hand back. “You had information for me?”

He shifted mood and subject with her, seamlessly. “Not the way I would have put it, but yes.” He directed her to a seat in front of a dimmed console. “The Covenant’s latest communiqué arrived.”

He bent over her to type in a series of pass codes, and the screen sprang to light—black typewriter print on white, the same format she’d been seeing for seven years, even when she slept. She was buoyed, at least, that the bad guys had nothing better.

“You could have just sent me this,” she said, scanning the screen. 

“Ah, but that would have denied me the pleasure of your company.”

She didn’t answer, studying the information in front of her instead. Largely disappointing; no wonder the Covenant needed a mole in the CIA. There was very little here that was news, even to her, whose position in the Agency was still tenuous at best. (She was turning out, she suspected, much more like her father than anyone was comfortable with, herself included.)

“Also,” he continued, “there is the mission.”

“Yes?”

“In Tokyo. Plane leaves in the morning.”

She met his eyes briefly, then returned to the screen.  _Sleepover with Sark_ , she thought. She suspected toenail polish was not on the agenda.

He pressed his lips to her shoulder ( _Lauren_ ’s shoulder, Lauren’s ribbed gray sweater) as he read over it—such a small, warm, intimate thing that her breath caught.

“Sark,” she began, turning her head towards him, and that was when he kissed her.

She’d known it might come to this from the beginning. “But Dad,” she’d said, “it’s  _Sark_ ,” and he’d been silent on the other end, as if he were actually less pleased by it than she was. Also unspoken was that it was her choice—but that they both knew, given the situation, what her choice would be.

It was a lot easier than kissing Simon. But a lot more . . .  _invasive_. He tilted her head back and opened her mouth with his own, tongue thick and tasting faintly of very, very good wine against hers. And he was dragging her to her feet, chair discarded, freeing the hem of the sweater from where it was tucked into her pants, hands startlingly warm (for someone so often outwardly cool) on Lauren’s skin, and she forgot it was Lauren’s, forgot where she was, forgot what she was doing here.

When he broke the kiss, she was dizzy. The swell of Lauren’s lips was an unfamiliar feeling, but the low ache could have been her own.

Linking their fingers, he drew her left hand up and took the fourth finger into his mouth. Eyes locked on hers, he drew the ring off, slowly, and deposited it into his hand. She shivered.

“Upstairs?” he asked.

“The penthouse?” she asked.

“Nothing’s too good for my girl,” he replied, as earlier, but this time his voice was low and blurred and full of promise. And the promises of sociopaths weren’t things that usually affected her like this. She felt light-headed.

“I’m Michael Vaughn’s girl,” she told him, haughtily, tamping down on the feeling. “Or didn’t you remember?”

Finally: a flash of irritation lit his face. He lifted the ring up for her inspection, then threw it. It skittered across the floor, out of sight, and she thought, _Shit_.

“Not anymore,” he said, thrusting his hand nearly violently into her hair, tilting her head back.

“Shouldn’t we talk,” she said as he kissed down her throat, stretching the neck of Lauren’s sweater as he went; she tried to ignore the scrape of his teeth and the softness of his mouth, “about the mission?”

“No,” he said, curt and final, the sound muffled in the crook of her neck as he found a spot at Lauren’s collarbone that made the light dim in her eyes and her knees buckle.

Then, thank God, her phone rang.

“Vaughn,” she said, and it must have been the magic word, because Sark stepped back, and gestured almost gallantly to her purse, abandoned on the table.

She grabbed the phone and flipped it open. “Lauren Reed speaking.”

“Lauren, it’s me.”

“Michael!” she exclaimed with Lauren’s customary enthusiasm. She shot a look at Sark, who was leaning on another table, arms lazily crossed and one eyebrow cocked. His mouth twitched in amusement.

“Are you busy?”

“No, not terribly. Not for you.”

“It’s Sydney.”

“Sydney?”

Sark leaned forward almost infinitesimally, but she couldn’t miss the change in him, a coiled sort of tension that made her suspicious. He wasn’t smirking anymore.

“Her body—it’s been stolen.”

“What?” Her attention wrenched back to Vaughn.

“They were moving her to another hospital when they were intercepted. A team took her. We’re not sure who. We suspect Covenant, but . . . And we can’t get in touch with Jack.”

She was silent, shocked straight through. When she didn’t answer, Vaughn said, awkward now, “You said you wanted to know.”

“I did. Thank you.” Her body was gone. Her father was incommunicado. Even in the middle of surveillance, he would have answered his phone, protecting his cover story. “Michael—”

“Lauren, I have to go. There’s—Kendall’s calling. I’m sorry. I miss you.”

“I miss you too, love.”

Sark turned on his heel and headed for the elevator.

“Be safe.”

“You too.”

She reached the elevator, entered just before the doors slid shut.

He flicked his eyes in her direction. Smoothly, he asked, “Going up?”

She could slip out when he slept. Or she could stay, and try to find out what he knew about her body’s disappearance. Either way, step one meant going upstairs with him. Although she could always knock him unconscious and exit at the lobby. She shouldn’t forget that option. 

She looked straight ahead. “Of course.”


	4. Part 1, Act 4

She didn’t know how, but when she woke up, she’d been tied to a chair.

Then she remembered— _Sark_ —and felt very, very stupid.

“Welcome back, Agent Bristow,” he greeted her.

She looked him in the eye, gauged her chances of bluffing successfully, and said, “How did you know?”

“You told me,” he said, pleasantly, and then the door across the room to her right opened, and she was standing there, looking at once very Lauren and completely unrecognizable. It wasn’t only the body she was in; it was the black leather pants, the boots, the skin tight top that managed to produce more cleavage from Sydney’s serviceable but fairly slight breasts than Sydney or the CIA ever had. Her hair was left loose, her eyes were smoky, lips heavily glossed. 

Sydney spared a thought for whether Vaughn would react as well to Lauren in Sydney’s skin as he had to Sydney in Lauren’s. And then she ached for him again, because he still had no idea.

“Hello, Sydney,” Lauren said, coming up beside Sark. His arm slip around her and rested possessively over Sydney’s hip, smirking. It was disgusting, and unspeakably erotic.

“How long have I been out?” she demanded.

“Long enough,” Sark said, splaying his hand more obviously across her hipbone, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the jutted curve of it.

There was so much wrong with what she was seeing that she couldn’t speak. She was sure her horror, her disbelief, was plain on her face. The idea of Lauren sleeping with Sark had turned her stomach, and not only for Vaughn’s sake. The idea of Sark touching Sydney’s body was disturbing, in a number of ways. But the idea of Lauren experiencing pleasure in Sydney’s body, whether at Sark’s hands or not, was somehow more horrifying than them both.

“Honestly, Ms. Bristow,” he laughed, “you didn’t think I’d miss the opportunity to hear my name from your lips in something other than scorn, did you?”

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” Sydney said evenly. “You won’t get the chance again.”

“I find that very unlikely.” His smile was pleasant, close-lipped. Lauren was laughing at her. Lauren probably spent a lot of time laughing at her.

Sydney felt bile rise in the back of her throat.

“You see,” Sark said, “we haven’t yet happened upon a way of reversing the situation. So for the time being you will have to remain in Lauren’s body, and she in yours. Which promises me many, many opportunities to hear you cry out my name in pleasure.” Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he pressed mouth to the side of Lauren’s jaw and slid his hand along her ribs.

Sydney couldn’t help the physical reaction to the sight of her own face twisted in pleasure—but she could keep it from registering on her face. She lifted her chin.

“Perhaps I’ll return to the CIA in the meantime,” Lauren said. “Tell Michael his wife has been killed. Console him. The way you consoled him in Korea?”

Sydney’s nostril’s flared, but she forced her expression to remain even. “He won’t fall for it.”

“Oh?” Lauren asked. “I hear you and he met for lunch. That he kissed you. Did he notice then?"

This had all been a set up. They’d known. They’d known the whole time. Sark had known when she first walked into the hotel. Maybe before. Was there ever supposed to have been a meeting at all? Or had Sark’s call been sheerly for her benefit?

Lauren was still speaking; Sydney forced herself to listen.

“Tell me,” she was saying, “was the kiss everything you remembered? Had I taught him anything new?”

“My father knows,” Sydney said, ignoring her. “He’ll tell the CIA. You’d never make it through the door.”

“We have your father,” Sark said, and Lauren snapped her head towards him. “Don’t worry about that.”

 _Oh God._  Sydney closed her eyes.

Lauren moved from Sark to stand over Sydney’s chair, a sinuous slide that dripped with sex appeal. Lauren smiled—and then she slapped her.

Sydney’s head whipped to the left. She felt her cheek split and tasted blood in her mouth.

“Ah, Lauren . . .” she heard Sark say mildly.

“Every time he looked at you,” Lauren hissed, “I wanted to kill you. I put two and a half years into this assignment. Put up with Michael’s clumsy affections, his pathetic grief. And then you show up and it’s like I’ve done nothing. I have to work twice as hard for his attentions. I have to pretend to try to like you.”

Lauren grabbed Sydney’s hair and wrenched her head back until Sydney’s mouth was a hair’s breadth away from her own. “If you were wearing anyone’s body but my own, you’d be dead right now.”

“Lucky me,” Sydney spit. The blood from her cheek felt thick and wet on her face.

“Lauren,” Sark said again.

“The first thing I’m going to do once I’m back in my own body is slit your throat.”

Sydney gritted her teeth. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it now? Save us both some trouble.”

“No one’s doing anything,” a woman’s voice said from the doorway.

Lauren whirled; Sydney thought her heart would stop.

“Mom?” she whispered.

This whole scenario was getting to be a habit.

Irina smiled, softly. “Hello, Sydney,” she said. And then she shot her.


	5. Part 2, Act 1

“My thanks,” Sark said to the man he’d tasked with letting him know Agent Vaughn had departed. No use distressing her so early; calling while Vaughn was still present, as entertaining as Sark found it, never failed to irritate her, and he needed her in a softer mood for what he was planning.

He dialed Lauren’s number.

“Hello?” Lauren answered.

 _Already awake_ , he thought.  _Excellent._

“Ms. Reed.”

He thought of her mouth, how exquisitely formed her lips were. He was still pondering them when she demanded, “What?”

 _No hope for a soft mood there_ , he supposed, and sighed inwardly. “Just calling to confirm our plans for this evening.”

Prickly, unpredictable woman. It was one of the things that intrigued him about her. He had a certain fondness, he knew, for women who . . . challenged . . . him. This was, however, somewhat excessive.

“This evening?” Her cultured tones sounded startled.

He closed his eyes a moment, trying to focus back on her mouth. It helped his outlook immensely. “Tedious, darling,” he replied, and couldn’t help needling her. “Or is loverboy still there? Your video feed showed him on his way out the door five minutes ago.”

“He went for a run.”

Well, if she wanted to play it like that: “Keeping in shape for you, I presume. Or perhaps for the lovely Ms. Bristow?”

The silence on the other end was terse, and he smirked.

“Goodbye, Sark.”

“Till this evening at the Bellvue, Ms. Reed. I do hope your husband won’t be waiting up.”

He clicked off the phone and held it distractedly in his hand, looking at it as if it might yield knowledge. Strange, but she’d never said his name with such a lovely mix of irritation and derision before. It reminded him of someone; he wasn’t sure who. Regardless, it had made him slightly hard, and he mused on what else he could say to elicit a similar tone.

Then, oddly, his phone rang. The number was unfamiliar.

“Hello?” he answered cautiously.

“I have a problem,” the voice on the other end hissed.

Sark knew that voice. Sark had occasional nightmares about that voice. “Ms. Bristow?” he asked, startled.

“No. That’s my problem.”

He was speechless for more moments than he cared to be. “May I ask to whom I am speaking, then?”

“It’s Lauren, you bloody pillock. For God’s sake!”

“And yet you sound like Agent Bristow,” he responded, taking care to sound unruffled, unperturbed. “Fascinating.”

“Does Sydney,” she sneered on the name, “call you often?”

“No, but she does have a particular fondness for insulting me, so that last bit wouldn’t have been out of character. Care to fill me in on the situation . . . Ms. Reed?”

“I woke up this morning in Sydney’s bed. I looked in the mirror, and discovered that I was not only in Sydney’s apartment, but also in Sydney’s body.”

“So that wasn’t you I spoke with on the phone a few moments ago,” he mused.

“Have you  _listened_  to a word I’ve said?” Lauren half-shrieked. “Wait. You  _called_  me?”

“And you answered,” he told her. “Which normally would not be so very troubling. Have you spoken to anyone?”

“What?”

“Have you  _spoken_  to anyone, Ms. Reed?”

“No.” A pause. “I called you first.”

“Touching,” he smirked. “Does Ms. Bristow have any sedatives?”

He heard the sound of bottles hitting against each other. “Yes,” Lauren answered after a moment, cautiously. Unexpected of her to be so willing to be led, and slow to catch on, but she  _had_  woken up on the wrong side of the city, stuck in her rival’s skin, and he supposed he must make allowances for that.

“Use it.”

He could hear the sound of protest start in her throat as she began to argue, but then grasped his train of thought. “I had a pedicure scheduled this afternoon,” she said acidly instead.

“I’ll arrange to have you picked up,” he continued without acknowledging her. “Oh, and you might want to arrange it to look like—”

“I’m not an amateur,” she snapped, and hung up.

Sark smiled. He really was quite fond of her. She wasn’t Allison, but he couldn’t expect every lover to be.

He took a moment to enjoy the anticipation of a job about to be well done. Delicious, really, the situation with which he’d been presented. He felt more like himself than he had in ages—than he had since before he’d found himself in CIA custody.

Then he dialed. “We have a most interesting opportunity,” he informed his contact on the other end.


	6. Part 2, Act 2

He arrived at the Bellvue early. While he didn’t expect Agent Bristow for hours yet, it was, as it went in the American vernacular, better to be safe than sorry. And Sark was rarely ever sorry.

The timing had to be precise, lest he risk tipping his adversary off before the round had even begun. And this was one game he was very much looking forward to.

He ensured that the false files had been properly uploaded to his personal secure ftp site. Then he downloaded them to the machine he had chosen, and disconnected the rest. He took the further precaution of disabling access to the web on the machine he would be employing. If there was anything Agent Bristow possessed that was greater than her skill and tendency towards personal tragedy, it was her professional luck. He would be as thorough as possible; the less that could go wrong, would. Nothing would be left to chance, as chance had never favored him overmuch.

He prepared the suite upstairs, aiming for elegantly lived in, almost as if for a date—an amusing façade of champagne and tranquilizers, rose petals and restraints. No time to set up an audio feed for insurance, but no matter. There was no one he trusted to monitor it.

He called in final instruction—“Hold until you are signaled, or as long as you can"—and made his way downstairs to the bar, the capsules he’d procured slipped into his inside pocket, gun at his back in case of extreme circumstances. He didn’t foresee any difficulties.

Of all the things he eventually tired of—his various employers, the mandate others had always seemed to possess to dress him in blue—a good red wine was singular in its staying power. He ordered a glass, and positioned himself with a clear view of the hotel’s front entrance. He’d had the back and side doors preventatively soldered shut, though he suspected it to be a foolish precaution. Sydney Bristow, in full possession of her faculties, did not sneak in through fire doors and abandoned exits. Sydney Bristow breezed in through front doors as if they’d been put there just for her. Of course, the way Rambaldi sometimes wrote of it, they were.

She didn’t disappoint.

The woman he knew as Lauren Reed, NSC liaison to the CIA, undercover Covenant operative, and fabulous fuck, strode through the entrance as if this were a television program of which she was the star.

He raised his glass to her, transmitting the intended message to his man at the door.  _Have them take her now._

She looked like Lauren, but she still walked like Sydney. Sloppy.

“Good evening, Ms. Reed,” he greeted her as she slid into the bar stool beside his.

“Julian,” she answered him, and that, somehow, was Lauren precisely. Sydney was, after all, very,  _very_  good. He’d simply have to be better. First—

“Shall we proceed, or would like something from the bar?”

“I had something on the plane,” she replied, dashing his hopes of slipping the first capsule into her drink.  _All right_ , he thought, watching her as she watched him.  _Tricky, but not impossible._

“Excellent.” He placed his glass on the bar, its work completed. “On to business, then.”

He offered her his arm. If Sydney had been allowed to be the Sydney he knew, she would likely have felt moved to rip it off and beat him with it, just for his audacity in offering it.

As it was, she scorned him. Risky move; he admired her for that. He chuckled. And to reassure her—no use making her worry—he murmured, “I see we’re back to this,” as he touched a hand to the small of her back.

He took a perverse satisfaction in the fact that she let him. Lauren never would have, and he took advantage of the fact that Sydney did not know it. Yet it was, indeed, Lauren’s back he was touching, Lauren’s muscles that bunched in Sydney’s irritation, and their mutual use of Lauren’s body felt delightfully illicit.

At the elevators he leaned forward, remaining what he hoped was uncomfortably close to the heat of her body, and pressed the down button. Inside, he chose sublevel three.

“I’m surprised,” she remarked. “Have they started building penthouses in the basement?”

His mouth curved. She seemed nervous; how quaint. Or perhaps she was testing him in some way? Looking for his reaction? If she thought this weak taunting was Lauren, she was naïve. Lauren was effortlessly far crueler.

“Nothing’s too good for my girl,” he said as the doors opened, with what he considered a more than adequate amount of charm. “Ladies first.”

He moved his hand to her back once more, guiding her to the proper terminal. She stopped part way there, turning to him, and he kept his expression carefully neutral.

“Why here?” she asked, something almost plaintive in her tone, and it took him a moment to identify the context of her question, the “here” of interest and the potential “there” that accompanied it, silent, between her words.  _Why not further away?_  she was asking. And,  _Why not someplace warmer?_  As well as: why not somewhere crawling with Covenant activity about which she could report back to her precious CIA?

He noted the way she was touching Lauren’s wedding ring, a nervous habit she could not have picked up in the mere hours she had been wearing it, and one she wouldn’t have affected in her endeavor to mask her true identity. She wasn’t here alone, he realized, but of course he’d already been told as much; the ring, whatever its precise significance, would have to be disposed of.

He lifted a shoulder to show indifference. “You said you hadn’t been here in a few years,” he lied smoothly, “and wanted to return. It’s as good a place as any.”

Her mouth parted. “Thank you for thinking of me,” she said, and he thought,  _That won’t do._  There was no challenge in capitulation, and if there was anything he consistently valued Ms. Bristow for, it was the challenge she presented.

“Come now, Ms. Reed,” he said blithely, “where is the characteristic cut of your tongue? I’ve been in your presence whole minutes and I’ve yet to even bleed a little.”

It was true of both women, the thing other than Agent Michael Vaughn they had most in common, and he found himself somewhat perplexed as how to deal with the woman standing before him without it. The real Lauren he could have scolded, or kissed, either one sure to get a sharp reaction; with the skittish, undercover Agent Bristow, his options were more constrained.

“You miss my tongue?” she murmured, quite surprisingly. He laughed, genuinely amused, and took the opportunity—her daring, her momentary openness—to pave the way for the next stage. Casually he took her hand, and brought the sensitive skin of Lauren’s palm to his mouth.

He smirked. “No more than you miss mine,” he said in such a way that even Sydney Bristow could not mistake his meaning. He wanted her to realize what she might need to do to go through with the charade, what he might expect of Lauren Reed—not because it assisted his plans but because it amused him.

But he was disconcerted when she jerked, color flooding her face. “All right?” he asked, startled.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a chill. You had information for me?”

Curious.

“Not the way I would have put it, but yes.” He showed her to the monitor he’d prepared, even put a hand to the back of the seat as if to pull it out for her. “The Covenant’s latest communiqué arrived.” He leaned over her, letting his suit jacked fall open as he bent to type the codes that would allow her access.

“You could have just sent me this,” she said, her tone vaguely annoyed.

“Ah,” he said, “but that would have denied me the pleasure of your company,” and slid his hand inside his jacket, over his heart, in a gesture that, had Ms. Bristow chosen to look at him in that moment, she might have classified as mocking. He nimbly plucked the first capsule from the inside pocket, and folded it into his hand. He was almost disappointed she was too occupied with the contents of the screen to not-notice the maneuver he’d just executed.

“Also,” he continued, turning to pull another chair up behind hers, “there is the mission.”

“Yes?”

“In Tokyo? Plane leaves in the morning.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him briefly, and he smiled to himself. Not that he minded, but this should have been more of a challenge.

He tucked the capsule into his mouth, and concealed the act of breaking it open by pressing his lips to Sydney’s gray-sweatered shoulder. He enjoyed the tension of her muscle under his mouth as he let the capsule’s contents dissolve. Then he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

She turned her head, said, “Sark—” and he took advantage of the part of her lips to insinuate his own.

He gave her credit: she neither seemed shocked nor pulled back. Instead, she let him open her mouth with his tongue, let the drug into her system. He fumbled her up, holding her mouth to his with one hand at the back of her head, reaching out with the other, blindly, to wipe the computer screen of its contents. Sydney pressed Lauren’s body against him in an entirely delightful way.

Certainly one of the least odious tasks he’d had to perform in his line of work, kissing Sydney Bristow.

Of course, he allowed that could be just the drugs making him feel the way he did. Their initial side effect was rather like a light buzz, or a rush of arousal. He had a window of time yet in which to take the antidote, before the rest of its effects kicked in. In the meantime . . .

He broke the kiss and, holding her gaze in his own, he brought her hand up, drew her fourth finger deep into his mouth, and removed Agent Vaughn’s ring with his teeth. Her mouth was swollen, cheeks slightly flushed. A tremor ran through her he could both see and feel.

“Upstairs?” he asked her, huskily.

“The penthouse?” she questioned.

“Nothing’s too good for my girl,” he repeated from earlier, this time allowing his tone to be an exercise in unabashed seduction. No need to tread lightly now—he’d done his work.

A gleam came into her eyes that made him wary nonetheless. “I’m Michael Vaughn’s girl,” she said. “Or didn’t you remember?”

She was taunting him; she’d grown too comfortable. Not bothering to hide his irritation, he lifted the ring he’d slid off her finger mere moments before and tossed it behind them. Her eyes widened; it gave him an immense amount of satisfaction.

“Not anymore,” he told her, pronouncing each syllable precisely. Then he took the liberty of placing his hands on her hips, and pulling her to him.

Her scent was free of Lauren’s thickly floral perfume; to conceal the slight tremor he himself was beginning to feel—from the drug, he was running out of time—he buried his face in her somewhat awkwardly held neck and inhaled deeply. He nipped her jaw, slid one hand up her back, and began to pull the fabric of the sweater from the side of Lauren’s splendid, slender neck.

“Don’t you want to talk about the mission?” he barely heard Sydney ask.

“No,” he said into her shoulder, and thought to himself,  _Absolutely not._  First because there was no mission, and second because he was beginning to feel the drug’s full effects now and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

 _Antidote_ , he thought, somewhat desperately. He’d never live down being found unconscious on top of CIA Agent Sydney Bristow, passed out on a subbasement’s old linoleum floor. Hardwood, marble, perhaps; linoleum, never.

His lips found a spot that Lauren had always liked; he grazed his teeth along it and Sydney went weak against him. He had moved back up to kiss her, hand just making its way to the interior of his suit coat, when Lauren’s NSC phone rang.

“Vaughn,” Sydney said against his mouth.

 _The timing of that man_ , Sark thought, and for once was whole-heartedly thankful. He stepped back, dropped a nod, and spread his hand out towards her bag, still back at the table at which he’d stationed them. The second capsule was closed in his other hand.

He watched her carefully as she turned to answer. Not enough time—she had evidently decided that the phone call was less important than tracking his movements. Obviously she was still in greater possession of her faculties than he was.

He leaned back against a nearby table and settled in for the duration of the conversation, arms folded and what he’d been told was his trademark smirk in place. He honestly disliked the idea of having any sort of trademark, other than a reputation for a job well done, but if it was what Agent Bristow would expect to see, then by all means he would give it to her.

He listened mildly as she exchanged her saccharine greetings with the man whose wife she was pretending to be, wishing the drug would hurry along—he didn’t care which of them passed out, but there was only so much of this one could take.

Then she said her name—“Sydney?”—and Sark thought,  _Bloody fuck. They’ve bungled it, it’s too soon._ But no, she wasn’t watching him any more closely than before; her face registered only numb shock.

As she began the ritual involved in hanging up—why couldn’t Americans simply conclude their conversation and leave it at that?—he turned and headed for the elevator. Best speed this along as quickly as possible, lest she connect him, his presence here, with whatever she had just been told about herself.

With his back turned, he was able to ingest the second capsule, and by the time she had slipped into the elevator beside him, he was already feeling calmer, clearer, more confident. 

He shifted his eyes to her, back in total control. “Going up?”


	7. Part 2, Act 3

The ride up to the penthouse was silent. Too silent, he knew, but Sydney was too far gone now for it to make a difference. He was surprised she hadn’t noticed yet, but it was only a matter of time, now.

She was unsteady as she exited the elevator and he reached out to support her elbow, thanking every deity he could recall. A drugged Sydney Bristow was only marginally less dangerous than the everyday model, and he much preferred the idea of transporting her passed out body to moving her awake and alert. She always threw such a fuss.

She smiled at him in a manner she must have thought was coy, almost as if she were trying to seduce him. He could only imagine her snow-white patriotic thoughts regarding sleeping with him for the good of her country. Poor girl. She wasn’t going to take this well when she awoke. Lucky for him she’d be tied up by then.

“This way, darling,” he said, coaxing her down the hall. “Just a bit further.”

Her breathing was starting to shallow. He braced her against the wall while he unlocked the door and pushed it open. Inside he traded the key card for the tranq gun he’d left prepared on the front table by the door, and turned back just in time to watch Sydney trip dizzily over the threshold.

It was charming, really, the way she stumbled into his arms. Her eyelids fluttered, and all at once she seemed to realize what was happening. Had already happened.

“You—” she began, lurching back, one stunned hand pressed to her mouth.

“Drugged you?” he asked. “Yes, of course.”

Her legs buckled and he caught her before she could fall.

“You should really be more careful,” he chided her as he deadbolted the door, still holding her lip form against his side. Well, Lauren’s limp form. No matter.

He dropped her onto the bed and picked up the phone.

“It’s done,” he said into the receiver. “Tell Irina we’re ready.”

*

He was waiting outside for Lauren when she arrived in a cloud of noise and dust, a broad white headlight in the dark. Shutting off the engine, she lowered the kickstand and swung Sydney’s long leather-clad leg over the motorcycle seat.

“I absolutely loathe Alaska,” she told him, grimacing.

He smirked. “Poor darling.”

“Where’s Sydney?” She ran her fingers through Sydney’s windblown locks and smoothed the tight black tank down over her torso.

“I’ve had her removed to a secure location,” he answered. “She’ll likely remain in her current state until morning, at least.”

“You’ve contacted the Covenant?”

“Your faith in me is astounding, really,” he drawled, but she ignored him in favor of what appeared to be checking the state of her own ass. “We’re expected in Tokyo with Ms. Bristow by midmorning tomorrow.”

He held the door for her as they entered the hotel, guiding her inside with a hand at her elbow. “I simply cannot adjust to this body,” she groused, accepting his assistance.

“You shouldn’t have to. I’m sure as soon as Sydney awakens we’ll be able to determine the cause of all this and put things to right.”

“Thank  _God_.”

“The question,” he said, appraising the swing of Sydney’s hips as they crossed the lobby, “is what to do with ourselves in the meantime.”

“I’ve had a wretched day, Julian,” Lauren warned as he slid his hand along the curve of her ass.

“Which is only bound to improve,” he murmured against her ear.

“Maybe later.” She brushed him off as the elevator door opened. “Did Sydney provide adequate cover for my disappearance?”

“Of course,” he said, and thought of Jack Bristow, who his men had apprehended behind the hotel with a van full of surveillance equipment. He should have expected him—the man had a tendency to oversee every facet of his only child’s life, particularly where the CIA was concerned, and of course this was no different. Irina would laugh at his negligence. Sark only hoped they’d captured him quickly enough that he hadn’t yet had time to relay the situation back to his superiors, if he was, indeed, operating with their approval. Too risky to stay here much longer in any case. But it would be a shame to waste the room entirely.

He unlocked the door in a curious echo of his earlier movements, and turned on the lights.

Lauren let out a small sound of pleasure at the champagne, the flowers. “Julian, you shouldn’t have,” she said, and he could have answered,  _I didn’t_ , but where was the benefit in that? If she was titillated by his artifice, then all the better. He took a fair amount of pride in the details, and Ms. Bristow hadn’t managed to stay conscious long enough to truly appreciate them.

He took her in his arms then, pleased by his ability to do so, and kissed her mouth, Sydney’s mouth, and it was as if he were kissing her for the first time. She tasted of cigarettes but also something hot and deep that he knew did not come from Lauren.

“I must admit, this does address a certain . . . proclivity . . . of mine,” he murmured, nuzzling her, taking in the scent of Sydney’s body.

She let out a short bark of laughter. “Julian Sark! You wicked, wicked little boy!”

“Mmm,” he commented. “Of course, Ms. Bristow would never consent to such a thing.”

“Never,” Lauren moaned as he bit down on her earlobe.

Her always-crafty fingers, moving between them, snaked his belt from his pant loops so quickly that the leather cracked like a whip. She pushed him away, and stood, belt taught between her hands.

“Now, Mr. Sark,” she said, effortlessly Sydney. “Tell me what I want to know.”

For one sheerly terrifying moment, he thought he’d made some sort of mistake. That this was the real Sydney Bristow after all and he’d been cleverly, seamlessly played. But the light in this Sydney’s eyes was far different as she looked at him.

He laughed. “Dirty girl,” he told her admiringly as she backed him up until his legs hit the edge of the bed. “We haven’t even opened the champagne.”

She regarded him with a steady Bristow stare.

He cleared his throat, intrigued. “My apologies. What precisely did you want to know, Agent Bristow?”

“The location of the Rambaldi artifact.”

“I don’t have it,” he said, and ran his fingers lightly along her bare forearms, her biceps, tracing her collarbone.  _Oh, yes_ , he thought, more aroused than he had anticipated.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, crossing her arms, belt still trailing from one hand. “I think you have it on you.”

“You can search me if you wish,” he offered, eyes hot.

He skin was flushed as well; he wasn’t the only one enjoying their little charade. Curious. He wouldn’t have expected that of her. But there would be plenty of time later to think through what that meant.

“I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last man on earth.”

“Ms. Bristow,” he said, “I don’t believe you have a choice.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to his mouth, where her tongue met his hungrily, stroke for stroke. The belt dropped from her fingers.

“Screw the champagne,” he said.

Her response was to topple him back onto the bed, which gave beneath their weight. Straddling him, she peeled her shirt off, baring Sydney’s breasts.

He didn’t mind Lauren dominating him; expected it, really. Even thrived on it. Poor girl, having to play sweet submissive to CIA boy scout Michael Vaughn. Sark enjoyed strong women, so long as their interference in his actions was limited to token exercises of power. He had allowed Irina to control him more than most; she was a remarkable woman, and it had been proven time and time again that strict adherence to her instructions only served him well. But the sight of Agent Sydney Bristow rising over him, long limbs and dark hair pinning him to the mattress, was the most perfectly, improbably stirring image he’d ever seen.

Then her fingers found the button on his trousers.

Somewhere in the middle, he stopped thinking of her as Lauren, and began thinking of her only as Sydney. Hard not to, with her eyes closed, voice silent, head thrown back against the pillow.

He was brutal.

It inflamed him, the way she took it, his fingers thrusting into her, into her body, breaking her careful, constructed façade, even if it was Lauren allowing him to do so, Lauren opening Sydney to him the way she’d opened herself to him many, many times. Her skin was damp and purloined against his own, her hair stolen silk, and the nipple he tongued in time to the push of his hand hard and turgid and temporarily his. She was temporarily his, to do with as he wished.

“Julian, please!” Lauren begged, arching against him, reaching for his cock, hard against her opened hip.

“Come for me first,” he insisted, driving into her harder, eliciting a startled gasp. He wanted to see it; he wanted to watch her. He wanted to know what Sydney Bristow looked like when she came.

She looked like an angel, lips parted, amber hair a halo on the three-hundred count white cotton sheets. He kissed the side of her breast, her neck, as her breathing stuttered, slowing, then disengaged his fingers.

“Oh, God,” she moaned, and then spread her thighs further as he rolled over her to press against her opening. He would have taken her from behind, but he needed desperately to see her face.

One authoritative push and he was there, inside her, transfixed by the arch of her neck and the heat that surrounded him. One woman was much like any other in this regard, but he could not help but romanticize this particular woman and the way she felt beneath him, supple muscle and slick, yielding flesh. Surprisingly not like Lauren at all. Much more as he had always imagined her mother might feel.

Gripping her hips for leverage, he began to move.

“You’re thinking about her,” she murmured, stroking the fingers of one hand through the short hairs at the back of his neck.

“Damn right I am,” he more muttered than said. “Do me a favor and please shut up.”

Her laugh was full-throated, and she tipped her hips up to receive him better.

“I could always tell when Michael was thinking about her too,” she said. “Always.”

Sark squeezed his eyes shut. “Lauren, please—”

“Oh . . . oh  _Sark_ ,” she pitched in Sydney’s voice, a perfect blend of shock and arousal, and it was quite embarrassing but he came at once at the sound of it, pistoning into her, finishing hard and deep and collapsing over her waiting body.

“All right, Julian?” she asked after a few long moments in which he found himself nearly irresistibly drawn towards sleep.

“Very,” he answered, pulling out of her with regret and, eyes still closed, rolling them both over onto their sides.

He kissed her shoulder, and smiled at her contented purr. A marvelous bedmate, Lauren was, whatever body she wore. Their association had proven to be a boon on several fronts. Too bad it would soon be ending.

He pulled her back, snug, against him, double checked the glock under the pillow, and then, finally, let himself drift off into dreamless sleep.

Tomorrow would be dealt with. No need to concern himself with it until it arrived.


	8. Part 3, Act 1

Previously:

 _“The first thing I’m going to do once I’m back in my own body is slit your throat,” Lauren hissed._

 _Sydney gritted her teeth. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it now?”_

 _“No one’s doing anything,” a woman’s voice said from the doorway._

 _“Mom?” Sydney whispered._

 _Irina smiled, softly. “Hello, Sydney,” she said. And then she shot her._

\-----------------------

Sydney stared in shock as Lauren sank to the floor, right hand pressed to the fresh bullet wound marking her left shoulder.

“Ow,” Lauren said, seeming infinitely annoyed.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Irina said to Sydney, holstering her gun as several armed guards filed in from behind her and headed for Lauren, who was hunched over on her knees. “That may take a few weeks to fully heal. I tried to make it as clean as I could.”

Sydney couldn’t form words; she just stared, uncomprehending.

Irina smiled, and turned to look at Sark. “Mr. Sark,” she said melodically.

“Irina,” he returned, and nodded. “Good to see you again.”

She smiled. “Likewise.”

“You,” Sydney finally managed, staring now at her kiss-drugging captor. “You orchestrated this.”

Sark inclined his head as if it were a compliment. “Of course. I’ve never truly left your mother’s employ.” He put the emphasis on the first syllable of the word.

“He’s a good boy,” Irina said, lips curving.

“You bastard,” Lauren sniveled, secured with her hands behind her back as she was jerked up to a standing position. It couldn’t be comfortable, but Sydney had a hard time summoning any pity. Lauren strained against the man that held her. “I thought you cared about me.”

 _Sark, care?_  Sydney wanted to laugh.

But he looked genuinely chagrinned. “Darling, it’s not like that. You know how I feel about you.”

Sydney snorted, and earned an irritated look from him.

“I simply had a prior commitment.”

Lauren’s face was pale but set, more fire in her eyes than Sydney had ever seen.  _This is the real Lauren_ , Sydney thought, and shuddered. The blood from the gunshot wound was starting to drip, failing to soak into the leather of Lauren’s corset top. It spread across her exposed cleavage, colored her arm bright red. “The Covenant will not be pleased.”

“The Covenant,” Sark said distinctly, “can kiss my ass.”

“Julian,” Irina said warningly, and it was as if a mask came down across his features; the change was immediate.

“My apologies,” he said to her smoothly. “My apologies to you as well, Agent Bristow, for my actions moments ago. You know I hold you in the highest regard.”

From the sound of protest Lauren made, Sydney suspected the apology was for his blatant fondling of her body in front of her. Not drugging her. Of course, this was Sark; it wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that he was just been apologizing for his momentary loss of manners.

“You got off on it,” Lauren spit.

“Be that as it may,” Sark said, jaw tight, appearing somewhat pained, “it does not lessen my respect for her as an agent.”

“That’s quite a relief,” Sydney said, eyes narrowed. “It should be a lot easier for you then when I finally kill you.”

Sark just smiled. “Now you’re trying to turn me on.”

“Sydney.” Irina again. “You might consider the fact that he’s saved your life.”

“Yes, Mom, thank you,” Sydney snapped. “I’m sure he had only my best interests at heart.”

“He could have turned you over to the Covenant.” Was that a hint of fear Sydney heard in her voice?

“Irina, Sydney,” Sark said, back to his usual cool efficiency, “should we not be arranging medical attention for Ms. Reed?”

“Of course.” Irina lifted one hand and dismissed the guards. They moved immediately towards the exit, pushing Lauren along in front of them. Sydney had to hand it to her: Irina Derevko’s men were certainly well-trained.

“Where are you taking her?” Sydney asked, watching them.

“Your body will be well taken care of,” Irina said.

Sark grasped her concern more fully. “I assure you, Sydney, she will be carefully secured. It is in none of our best interests that she become freed.”

Sydney gave a short nod, accepting that, and took advantage of the brief lull to take another cautious inventory of her surroundings. Nothing she could use. The room was too bare to be so accidentally.  _Whose careful planning?_  she wondered. Her mother’s, or Sark’s?

“You said you had my dad,” she said, turning her head back to her mother.

Irina’s answering smile was like a ray of sunlight, and Sydney could remember too well the days when the gift of that smile was the fulcrum of her life. “He’s safe, Sydney. There was no need to hurt Jack. But I couldn’t have him jeopardizing this.”

“As touching as this reunion is . . .” Sark sounded annoyed, but only mildly. The man was like dish soap.

Irina straightened, and said, “I need the artifact you stole two nights ago in Hungary.”

Sydney digested this. “What for?” 

“To keep it away from Sloane.”

“Sloane.”

The expression on her mother’s face was poignantly bitter, exquisite in its subtlety. “You didn’t honestly believe Sloane had changed, did you?” 

“No,” Sydney answered, truthfully, but was disappointed anyway. She hadn’t believed it. But a part of her had wanted to. She was tired of their enmity, tired of his mind games and having to be wary of them; she was tired of a lot of things in this new world, particularly the way its twists continued to unfold whether she sought out the truth or not.

“I need you, Sydney,” Irina said. “I need your help.”

“Why me?”

“I need another operative. And you need your body back.”

Sydney’s mouth went dry. “You know what did this to me. You know how to make it switch Lauren and I back.”

“I know what the disk does,” Irina said. “ Or what it is supposed to do. Not this. But I believe I know how it can be reversed.”

“How?”

Irina shook her head.

“I don’t need your help to access the disk,” Sydney said. “All I have to do is walk into the CIA and ask for it.”

“Except the CIA no longer has the Rambaldi disk. The Convenant does.”

“While you were indisposed yesterday evening,” Sark told her, “Lauren intercepted the armored car transporting the disk to project Black Hole. She delivered the chip to McKennas Cole—”

“ _Cole_?”

“—before meeting me in Anchorage.”

“We need each other Sydney.” Irina looked earnest, and kind, the mother Sydney had always wanted, except she was talking about espionage.

“And after I break into the Covenant and retrieve the disk? What’s the keep me from taking it back to the CIA?”

“Me,” Sark said.

“And the fact that I will be holding Jack until you and Sark return with the disk.”

Of course.

“Tell me this much,” Sydney said. “The disk—what does it do? What does Sloane need it for?”

“There is something I have,” Irina said, “that Sloane needs. I believe I can keep it from him. But in the event that—in the event that I fail to do so, this disk will be the difference between his ability to activate the . . . artifact, and the artifact being useless to him.”

“How do I know you won’t just use the disk to activate the artifact yourself?”

Irina smiled, almost as if she was proud of her for asking. Or had expected nothing less, and had an answer already prepared. “My word. And the fact that the rest of the components are securely in Arvin’s possession. I only want to keep it from him, Sydney, I swear to you. Nothing more.”

Sydney studied the situation from every angle she could think of. She had, it appeared, little choice. Refuse to help them, and remain in Lauren’s body indefinitely while the Covenant did who knows what with the only way she had of getting back into her own skin. Or agree, and potentially make it home, as herself, with her father and whatever Covenant intel she could pick up while inside.

But there was one more thing.

“What’s he,” she nodded towards Sark, “getting out of this? How do you know he isn’t playing you?”

“Because I know where his loyalties lie.”

“With you,” Sydney said, skeptically.

Irina smiled fondly, placing her slim hand on Sark’s smooth cheek. “He’s like a son to me.”

The jealousy Sydney felt was inexplicable, and misplaced. “Did you fake your death with him too?”

“Several times, actually,” Sark said, his gaze on Irina’s enigmatic face. “She’s rather like a cat.”

Irina laughed, and dropped her hand.

Sydney couldn’t keep the venom from her voice. “And you always come when she calls.”

He turned his eyes to her. “One must have some loyalties. Sis.”

Sydney inhaled slowly through her nose, and counted to ten. Then she counted to ten again. It did absolutely nothing. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood instead.

“I’ll do it,” she said.


	9. Part 3, Act 2

Sark untied her—he was obviously still doing her mother’s dirty work—and Sydney rubbed the soreness from her wrists as she stood unsteadily.

“Sydney,” Irina said, and looked as if she wanted to embrace her—but Sydney couldn’t, not yet, maybe not ever again. “I need to oversee Reed’s care. Sark will take you somewhere you can change and get some rest.”

“I’ve been unconscious for the last twelve hours,” Sydney said.  _At least._ She couldn’t tell the time of day, or even if they were still in Alaska. She’d be willing to bet that they weren’t.

Irina regarded her with affectionate amusement. “It will give you a chance to adjust to the situation, then. I’ll have some food sent up.”

Sweet of her.

Irina smiled once more and Sydney watched her warily as she left,

“Where are we?” she asked after the door had closed, turning to Sark.

“Tokyo,” he said. He was probably lying. Didn’t really matter, anyway; she’d asked more to begin to establish some sort of amity between them than to get an answer. He’d always before encouraged any brief overture she’d made (appropriately few as they had been), but not this time, apparently. He glanced at his watch; waiting the appropriate amount of time for Irina to vacate the hall, she imagined. Nice to know she was trusted.

The watch’s answer must have been acceptable, because he opened the door and motioned for her to precede him. Fine. She could handle that. As far as kidnapping situations went, this was turning out to be fairly tame. At the very least, she hadn’t been forced to watch her own funeral. Yet.

The hall was sterile, devoid of markings, with high ceilings that made them feel both narrow and lofty. It was a far cry from the shabby comfort of CIA safe houses.

“To the right, Ms. Bristow,” Sark said, and Sydney wondered how he decided which name to call her, because as far as she could tell, he used them entirely at random. If she was going to be working with him—again—it was in her best interest to try and understand the dynamics at work between them, and between him and her mother. She wished she’d paid more attention to his goads about his relationship with her mother three years before; it seemed like something was off there. Then again, she’d never seen them in the same room together before, she realized—only imagined them, imagined what Irina treating him like a son would entail, since Sydney herself had never had to chance to be treated like a daughter—so she had nothing to compare it to.

“The door to your left.”

The door opened into a stairwell. She employed her common sense and started climbing it.

“You know,” Sydney said, “you could just go first.”

“I prefer the view from back here, thank you,” he said, and Sydney thought,  _Ew._ Sark may have been far from the most repulsive person to have ever checked out her ass—either physically or morally, sad to say—but it just made her skin crawl. It wasn’t even her ass he was looking at; it was Lauren’s. But if he was trying to get under her skin, it was working.

Didn’t mean she had to show it, though.

“Great place,” she commented at the fourth floor landing. Her voice echoed almost painfully. “Very homey. But you couldn’t have installed an elevator?”

“Don’t tell me the famous Agent Bristow is getting tired.”

Sydney flexed her jaw. “Your girlfriend must be out of shape.”

Silence from behind her. Good. They might not be on equal footing here, but they needed her—he needed her—and she wasn’t going to let him forget that.

At the seventh floor, he stopped her with a hand on her arm, and reached past her to swipe a badge past the sensor. The door clicked subtly and he caught the handle and pulled.

“Do I get a badge?” she asked.

He didn’t dignify her with an answer, just said, “End of the hall.”

Dutifully, she went through the door he held open for her.

One of the last doors on the left—labeled, she noticed with a mixture of irritation and resigned amusement, with the number 747—Sark unlocked with an old fashioned key. That was quaint, in a building full of spies.

“Your accommodations,” he said as he swung the door inwards and open.

The space was elegant and somewhat spare: bed with a clean white cotton bedspread, dresser, armoire, a few books laid out on a bedside table. A bathroom, she assumed, through a closed door.

“Should I be tipping you?” she asked him absently, scanning the room for weaknesses, surveillance equipment, possible escape. At first glance it was empty of all three. She’d check more thoroughly later.

“One tips their bellboy, Ms. Bristow.” He sounded insulted. “Not their host.”

So this was his building. Interesting. She didn’t even know he had buildings. Neither, she suspected, did the CIA.

“Good,” she said, “because I left my wallet on my other body.”

“There are quite a few of Lauren’s things here,” Sark said as he turned on the bedside light and surveyed the room with a critical eye. He moved to the armoire. “But since I suspected you might prefer not to the don the clothing of your romantic and professional rival, I took the liberty of procuring a few items you might be more comfortable in.”

“Tactical gear,” Sydney observed as she caught the item he tossed to her. A black vest. Granted, a really high quality black vest.

“I don’t see you that often, Sydney. Forgive my ignorance of your wardrobe preferences. It was that or a charming chartreuse rubber dress I spotted in a store window down the street.”

“You know,” Sydney said, “sometimes it really creeps me out that you’ve seen me naked.”

He smiled faintly at that, but didn’t rise to the bait. “Surely you’ll be able to find something suitable among Lauren’s undergarments. If there’s anything else you need, just call down.” He gestured to the phone.

“You’re leaving.”

“Astute of you to notice,” he commented, hand already on the doorknob.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“I neither know nor particularly care. There are a number of things that need to be set in motion before we leave for Covenant headquarters.”

Which of course she couldn’t help with. She hated doing nothing—since she'd returned from her . . . absence, in particular.

“I believe Irina promised she would send up something to eat. I suggest you make yourself comfortable until we contact you.”

And then he was gone. Though she was obviously a prisoner here, at least in part, he didn’t bother with the lock. They both knew it wouldn’t hold her. Locks and security weren’t what ultimately held her anyway.

She found the first device, a camera, in the television. She thought,  _Francie,_ and waved and smiled sweetly into the lens before cutting off the feed with a solid crunch of her right boot heel. She found one listening device in the bedside lamp, and another in the bathroom nestled among the guest soap and towels. _Good choice_ , she allowed. People rarely disturbed guest luxuries; no one, she supposed, really liked to think of themselves as guests.

Once she knew where they were, she let them be; no point, really, to dismantling them. She’d give Sark free access to visual of her changing habits over her dead body (though Lauren’s would do), but the microphones didn’t offend her. Of course they had to keep tabs on her. It would have been irrational of them not to.

The food arrived fairly soon after Sark’s departure, and she picked at the fruit salad and slices of bread and some expensive cheese she didn’t recognize, still a bit queasy from whatever Sark had used to knock her out.

Both she and her father had been overconfident, thinking this would be easy, but the worst fault was hers. The moment she received Vaughn’s phone call, she should have aborted. Instead, she’d thought,  _Maybe Sark knows where they took my body._ Not, as she should have,  _Maybe Sark is responsible for taking my body._ She had only herself to blame. And Sark, of course. Perhaps her mother as well, though she wasn’t clear how much she had been involved—other than using Sydney’s father to secure Sydney's cooperation now that she was here.

Her cooperation on an op. When both Irina and Sark had networks of operatives at least as qualified as she was. That rang remarkably false, but she wasn’t sure why they’d go through such trouble to get her otherwise. Sipping the tea that had accompanied the food, she sat on the bed and considered. Irina might—though it was doubtful—simply be looking to reconnect with her. But Sark? She still wasn’t convinced he was doing this for the reasons Irina said he was. The only thing she was fairly sure of was that he wasn’t working for the Covenant in this—if he was, he could have just handed her over with Lauren as planned.

Sydney felt far more relaxed than she should have, she knew. She might not be in any immediate danger—she accepted that her mother, while willing to put her in any number of difficult and dangerous situations, loved her, and was just as protective in her way as her father was in his—but she was far from safe, and still had Sark to contend with. He was loyal to Irina, but that loyalty extended to Sydney only on Irina’s behalf, and even then, Sydney suspected, only partially.

Then she realized.

She placed the cup back on the tray. She only had the chance to think,  _Son of a bitch,_ before she sank unconscious to the pillow.


	10. Part 3, Act 3

Sark closed the door on Sydney’s temporary accommodations and, after a detour to the kitchen, met Irina downstairs in the study he had set up for her use.

“You know,” she said conversationally as he entered, not looking up from the papers she was reviewing, glasses perched delicately on her lovely nose, “your total assets, even after two years in CIA custody, number far in excess of anything you could ever spend. And yet you’re concerned about this 800 million.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he told her. “The money is mine. And I want it back.”

Irina smiled at him, as mysteriously alluring as ever, and it was hard—so hard—to remember they were equals in this, partners, that he was no longer her loyal lackey, she no longer his mentor in the strictest sense—though he of course still respected her abilities greatly, and knew there was much he could still learn if he could remember to ignore his emotions and pay attention in her presence. Speaking of—

“I haven’t forgiven you for giving me up to the CIA, you know.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. But I do appreciate your cooperation in this, Julian. Very much.”

“It’s a mutually beneficial business arrangement, Irina,” he said, unreasonably irritated, “not a favor.”

“Still,” she said. 

It was very rare that affection overwhelmed Irina’s sound judgment, even where her daughter was concerned—therefore Sark knew never to rely on its likeness in her expression or her tone, at least when predicting her motives or behavior. Still, he was somewhat gratified to sense that she was pleased to be working with him again. He felt similarly: pleased to see her, but far from ready to allow that pleasure to lull him into a foolish sense of security. She had that effect on men—making them foolish. He wondered if she’d been yet to see Jack Bristow. He didn’t dare ask.

“Your daughter is restless,” he said instead.

“Did you expect otherwise?” She seemed unconcerned, turning back to her work.

“I tell you this so you won’t be surprised when you learn I drugged her tea.”

“ _Julian_ , honestly.” She pulled her glasses off. “Was that necessary?”

“I felt it was.”

She looked as if there was more she wanted to say, but knew as well as he that there was nothing to be done at this point. She shook her head. “You’re the one who has to work with her.”

“I’ll let her know it was my idea, not yours,” he offered, feeling generous at her capitulation.

“No,” she said, distracted, fingers brushing across the bottom of her frighteningly delicious mouth. Her eyes fixed on him. “No. We must appear to be united, to function with one set of intentions: mine. She must believe you are entirely loyal to me. If she believes that, she will be more willing to trust you.”

He sucked in his cheeks, feeling, oddly, dismissed. Inconsequential. Out of control. 

“And what if I take advantage of that trust?”

Irina’s smile was merciless. “I wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Sark.”

“I’m not yours to order around anymore, Irina,” he reminded her, ice in his eyes and voice.

“That wasn’t an order,” she said. “It was a threat.”

He lifted his eyebrows. Her gaze remained steady—she’d taught him the expression, after all—effortlessly in control of herself, and nearly him. She wouldn’t back down; neither, he told himself, would he.

“Perhaps you ought to look in on Lauren,” Irina said finally, less a dismissal than an offer of peace.

“Perhaps I should,” he agreed.

*

Lauren sat restrained in the darkness, still in her soiled clothes, shoulder bandaged with tape and gauze. They hadn’t given her anything for the pain, he realized, noting the particular dilation of her eyes. Irina was obviously unconcerned about the comfort of her daughter’s body—but of course, physically, Sydney could take nearly anything. And by the time the real Sydney inhabited her body once again, the pain would be only a distant throb, a memory in someone else’s head.

“Come for another taste of Sydney Bristow’s cunt?” Lauren asked in a low, biting voice.

The light from the hallway outside glinted on her hair and in her eyes, and it seemed for a bare moment Sydney herself sitting there, possessed by some demonic force, not her mirror image, the woman who’d taken over the life she’d left behind and been unable to reclaim upon her return.

Lauren sneered. “What would Mommy think?”

“Irina,” he emphasized her name, “does not concern me.”

She had at first, when he had passed Sydney over to her care—she had wanted to see to her personally, which had surprised him and then not surprised him, really, once he recalled, with that same subtle envy he often felt regarding Sydney, the way Irina had spoken of her daughter over the years—but after examining Lauren’s slack features, the slightly coppery tinge of her mouth, she’d commented, amused, “And did you enjoy seducing my daughter?”

Her tone had been light enough that he had risked responding, “She was rather easier than I thought she would be.”

“Or her opinion of your paramour isn’t very high.”

He’d made a face at her. “I do wish you wouldn’t call her that.”

“Give my best to Jack,” she’d said, and left, and he’d quite satisfying interpreted that to mean her best right cross, and delivered it with a fair amount of relish. Jack Bristow irritated him. And he’d been attempting to escape from Sark’s custody, after all.

That very Lauren look, disgust and cool superiority, spread across Sydney Bristow’s so-malleable features, bringing him back to the moment. “Irina may not concern you, but she very much concerns me.”

He frowned. “You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he said.

“Yes?” she asked. “And what do you call  _this_?” She pushed her chin in the direction of her injured shoulder.

“Barely a scratch,” he said. “You were in no danger. When you leave this building you won’t even bear a scar.” 

“ _If_  I leave this building,” she muttered darkly. Pessimistic of her.

“You have my word,” he offered by way of assurance, but her eyes flashed.

“And you think that’s enough?” she snapped. “After everything I’ve done to Derevko’s daughter, do you honestly believe she’d let me walk?”

Suddenly, he felt uneasy. He couldn’t allow it to show.

“She will if I order it.”

“Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.”

“I came,” he said, carefully polite, “to inquire after your welfare.”

“Don’t waste your manners on me, Julian. I know you.” She spit at his feet. “I wish I didn’t.”

He was contemplating his next move—she was angry, very angry, but he could bring her around, since cooperating with him was the most expedient way to save her life—when his cell phone vibrated where he had attached it to his belt. He checked the number—McKennas Cole.

“Excuse me,” he said to Lauren, who glowered at him, and stepped out into the hall.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Julian, baby! Where’ve you been? You missed your meet time.” The note of warning was clear and strangely menacing from a man whose predominant projection was that of incompetence.

“Some trouble,” he told Cole authoritatively. He had prepared for this. “Ms. Reed’s situation has been . . . reversed.”

“What?”

“You can imagine the difficulty, with Ms. Bristow suddenly free and my partner forcibly restrained. Ms. Bristow was able to escape.”

“Oh,  _man_. I cannot be _lieve_  this.”

He’d better, or none of this would work.

“We’re on Bristow’s trail now.” Sark paused, then added, painfully, “I was going to contact you.”

“Of course you were, Julian,” Cole said. “Forget Bristow. I need you both in here. Now.”

“Of course,” Sark said reasonably, really meaning,  _Bloody fucking hell._  This was somewhat ahead of schedule. He wished now he’d used something lighter in Sydney’s tea. Irina was going to give him that look, the one that, if they had been in grade school, might have been interpreted as  _I told you so._

“Tonight.”

“As soon as we can,” Sark said, allowing it to serve as either counter offer or confirmation, as the listener chose.

As Sark suspected he would, McKennas Cole chose the former. “You do good work, Mr. Sark. Don’t push me.” There was a click on the line.

Sark found it singularly unpleasant, being hung up upon.

“Move up the time table,” he said to Irina as he entered her office without knocking.

She stood, calm but curious, behind the desk.

“Apparently something’s come up.”


	11. Part 3, Act 4

Sydney was dreaming.

She could tell because her mother was there.

They were having a tea party, Sydney and her mother and several stuffed companions, bears and a bunny and Weiss and Dixon and Marshall, and a tiny dormouse, looks of horror stitched on their fuzzy faces. Sydney, seven, poured the tea.

“It’s so lovely that you were able to join us,” she said, filling her mother’s cup.

Laura Bristow was wearing gingham and smiling. She inclined her head as if to say,  _Of course._

Sydney hummed to herself and uncovered the crumpets. Inside the basket, where she couldn’t see, was the shiny black metal of a gun.

“I want to be just like you when I grow up,” she said.

Laura Bristow’s head turned, mouth lax, eyes sad.

 _There’s so much you don’t know._

There was movement, sound, something happening beyond the edge of the yard. It was fuzzy, indistinct. Sydney turned her head too.

“Will you tell me?”

Her mother didn’t answer.

The noise began to coalesce. If Sydney just listened carefully enough . . .

“Use the adrenaline.” Her mother’s voice. Brooking no arguments.

“Irina, it’s a risk—” Sark.

“I won’t send her in there unprepared.  _Use the adrenaline._ ”

“Sydney, no.” Her father, from behind her. She looked down. Saw her hands on the fence, small grubby fingers gripping razor wire. “Don’t pay attention to them. You’re safer here.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” she said, and turned and ran back to him.

She put her arms up and he lifted her into his embrace. She felt dizzy with the change in altitude, the way he spun her. She felt like the world was falling over. She felt . . .

She felt sick.

She woke and promptly rolled over to one side of the bed, vomiting up everything she’d managed to get down along with a healthy amount of stomach lining. The drug’s aftereffects were acid in the back of her throat.

“Would you  _stop doing that_?” she rasped, sitting up and doubling slightly to protect her still-distressed stomach. She took the cloth Irina offered her and wiped her mouth, then turned on Sark. “You cocky son of a—”

“She’s well enough to insult me,” Sark commented to Irina, as if Sydney weren’t in the room.

Irina’s mouth quirked. Suddenly, it struck Sydney that she didn’t know anything, really, about her mother’s sense of humor. For all she knew, Irina was where Sark got his.  _That_  was a disturbing thought.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Irina murmured. “It was for your own good.”

Sydney didn’t bother putting her response into words. For her own good, for Irina’s: did it really matter at this point?

“Do you think you can stand?”

“Sure,” Sydney said. “As long as you don’t expect me to go anywhere after I do it.”

“There’s no time. You have to leave now. Sark will brief you on the plane.”

And then she was helping Sydney swing her legs off the side of the bed, making room for Sark to assist her to her feet.

This was not a dignified way for a CIA agent of Sydney’s caliber to leave on a mission, even if said mission was being run by . . . what did her father say her mother was now? Sixth on the CIA’s most wanted list? Sark’s arm was steady around her waist, and her fingers dug into his wrist and opposite shoulder, holding herself up.

“You were lighter when you were unconscious,” Sark observed. Also, his hand had moved a little lower than she was comfortable with.

“Bite me,” she said.

“Oh, I have.”

She lifted her head in order to glare at him more effectively, and found his eyes lidded and his expression almost open, caught up in recollection. Creepy.

Noticing her looking at him, his mouth moved into a lazy smirk. “How ever will you explain the marks to your Agent Vaughn?”

“That’s enough, Julian,” Irina said, opening the door. “At least let her finish getting her bearings first.”

Sydney stumbled as they moved out into the hall, and grasped tightly to the fabric of Sark’s shirt.

“I’m not carrying you,” he told her, righting them both.

“Thank God,” she snapped back.

At the elevator, Irina held the door while Sark assisted Sydney in. Of course there had been an elevator.  _Bastard_.

“This is where we say goodbye, Sydney,” Irina said.

Sydney blinked at her, dumbfounded. Goodbye? Already? Again?

“She’s being dramatic,” Sark explained to Sydney. “You’ll see her when we return.”

“Take care of Dad,” Sydney whispered as the doors closed.

Leaving her alone, again, with Sark.

“A car is meeting us out front,” he said to her as she squeezed her eyes shut a few times and worked steadily on concentrating on his words. “It will take us to a plane. The plane is bound for St. Petersburg—Covenant headquarters. Or McKennas Cole’s, at least. Are you getting this, Agent Bristow?”

“Car. Plane. St. Petersburg,” she repeated dutifully. “Cole. I hate him.”

“In that, you and I are in perfect accord.”

“He called me Pigtails.”

“And you let him live,” Sark marveled. “Your restraint is humbling.”

“Go to hell,” she mumbled.

“You first, darling,” he replied as the elevator settled smoothly at the ground floor and he nudged her forward. Her stomach lurched around a bit but steadied fairly quickly. Now if only she could manage to focus. And get her feet working properly.

By the time they reached the plane—private jet, of course; the bad guys’ toys were always a cut above the good guys’, and even the CIA had its own planes—her vision had cleared and she was more sure on her feet: sure enough to mount the stairs without assistance, but not so sure that she wasn’t glad Sark followed behind her in case she slipped. It would serve him right to have to break her fall. By the time they reached the plane her mind was also sharp enough to receive the details of why she’d been so summarily awakened—and the first part of what she would have to do in order to secure her and her father’s safe release.

“Be on guard with Cole,” Sark told her, and she just barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I don’t know how close they are; Lauren’s been cagey on that particular subject. I have very little to give you that will be of assistance there.”

“So you do have something that will be of assistance in some other part of this?” She sounded doubtful and she knew it; it was her prerogative. She wouldn’t just be an errand girl in this, not if she could help it.

“Very much so,” he confirmed. He handed her a paper, which she unrolled. “A map of the building.”

She traced her fingers along the lines, committing them to memory.

Sark continued, “It’s not exhaustive. Rather, it’s a record of what I was able to recall from past visits. I suspect there are many, many parts of the building I have not seen. For some reason they’ve been very careful with me. Something about my not being entirely trustworthy.”

She snorted, and looked up in time to catch a ghost of a smile on Sark’s face. She bent back down, quickly, a little unnerved.

“Once we’re in, we’ll have to play it largely by ear. Cole called for a reason.”

She looked back up at him.

“One he chose not to share with me,” he said. “It may be in our best interests to go along with whatever he wants and make a play for the disk when we return.

“Now, it’s likely he’ll dismiss me and ask you to remain. Not, I presume, for anything illicit.”

“I managed kissing you; I can handle anything,” she said, returning to her study and feeling the familiar sense of readiness that missions always engendered begin to come over her, clearing her mind, relaxing her body.

“Yes. Thank you,” he said dryly, and she glanced up at him and smiled, forgetting for a spare moment that this wasn’t just another op. Forgetting who she was with.

Sark seemed surprised as well, but covered by continuing. “He may simply want to check up on me. Lauren’s never said.”

“There’s a lot it seems Lauren’s never said,” Sydney observed.

He shrugged, and handed her a folder. “Here’s everything Irina or I have been able to find out about the Covenant. The parts in red are what you are likely to be expected to know. The rest—names, possible security apparatus—are information only.”

“Got it,” she said. “Anything else?” Her voice was clipped.

His mouth stretched wide and taut—a chilly, condescending smile. “Do try to be nicer to me, Agent Bristow. I  _am_  supposed to be your lover.”

And then he reclined his chair and shut his eyes, and after a moment of furrowing her brow for no one’s benefit but her own, Sydney turned to study the contents of the folder.


	12. Part 4, Act 5

“Be smug.” Sark muttered the reminder as they approached the door. “Almost insufferably so—but never smarmy.  _Charming._  You have both Cole and I precisely where you want us, but you realize it’s a delicate balance to keep us there.”

“Got it,” Sydney said in Lauren’s clipped accent, and Sark could tell she was biting back some choice remark about his lack of help, or the quality of his faith in her espionage skills, or perhaps where, exactly, Lauren had him—or where Sydney would like to, and not in a good way. As they were two-thirds of the way up the walk to the compound—inside the exterior walls but outside the entrance proper—he appreciated her restraint.

He took her hand and kissed it through the leather glove, taking full advantage of Sydney’s inability to stop him. “Good luck,” he said, quirking his eyebrows in challenge.

“Thank you,” she said with a great deal of dignity and murder in her eyes, and his lips curved in a smile.

They were at a bit of a disadvantage, it was true; Cole was aware that a physical swap was possible and would be likely to suspect Sark of lying if Sydney slipped, but Sydney had spent more time studying Lauren—a false face of Lauren, but Lauren nonetheless—than even he had these past few months. And Lauren had after all crafted herself in Sydney’s romanticized image. That crafting was for Michael Vaughn’s benefit, it was true, but over time (as she’d confessed in a rare moment of honesty) she’d been unable to keep Vaughn’s wife from creeping into her own identity. Her attempts to banish the woman—her speech, her mannerisms, her susceptibilities—had only highlighted her presence.

Sark occasionally wondered who Lauren had been before, but never dwelled on it. It was who she was now that was important. Their identities, as spies, were an ever-shifting synthesis of their aliases, always fluid, always changing. It wasn’t only his loyalties that were flexible. Which was one of the things that had always fascinated him about Sydney—her ability to return to what she considered  _herself_ , and her insistence on doing so. Sark suspected it was more difficult for Sydney to accomplish since she’d returned from the dead, with few of the stays on which her identity had previously hinged available to her. He also suspected that, despite her memory loss, there was more of the Covenant’s Julia in her now than she cared to think about. Some fictions marked themselves more indelibly on one’s psyche than others.

He should know. He’d been living this one so long it had become nearly rigid around him. It was a shame how little alternate personas had been necessary in his recent . . . circumstances. He was so good at them, and he so rarely was in a position to employ that skill. He much preferred working with someone else, someone whose abilities he respected and who respected his in return, to working on his own—too much necessity for honesty that way, less opportunity of subsuming himself in a role, a job, a well-crafted plan. His strength was execution; his plans had an unfortunate tendency to go horribly awry, and it was often only his considerable skill in self-extrication that saved him when they did.

He understood his strengths, something which was invaluable and often neglected in his line of work. He recognized talent when he saw it (Sydney had it, with the potential to someday rival her mother); the leadership of the Covenant did not. He was constantly surprised they continued to get anything done.  _If only Irina had not been forced to expend so many of her resources tracking down her wayward daughter,_  he thought. If only K-Directorate had been able to recover more quickly from his summarily executing their leadership several years previous. If only Sloane had not found himself forced to dismantle the Alliance. If only, if only. The Covenant had benefited from a particular dead space in international espionage. They excelled in ferreting out and exploiting opportunity; their handling of his extraction to finance their operation proved that. But they wouldn’t have the benefit of his inheritance for much longer.

Sydney was all business as they were escorted through halls Sark remembered from his last unpleasant but ultimately profitable visit, her movements economical, brisk. He followed leisurely just behind her, admiring the lines of the black leather jacket where it curved along her hips, wondering how far he could convince her to let him go for sake of appearances.

He touched her arm once, inclining his head towards a specific vent under pretense of pulling her in for a kiss—a bit unprofessional for his taste, but not entirely out of character. He had taken pains to appear as besotted as possible in Cole’s presence without actually compromising his professionalism, when he normally would have chosen to downplay their association. It benefited him to appear under her thumb. It was why Cole had made them co-chairs, after all—Lauren, though competent, was still new to this particular game; he brought experience to the position, and she brought security to his appointment. She was the check to his balance. She would never become so attached to him that she would betray the Covenant on his behalf. If he attempted anything, she would report him to Cole, and Sark would be removed. It was smart—but then, Cole had worked under Irina as well.

Sydney turned her head at the last moment, and he managed only the corner of her lovely lips. “Later, darling,” she drawled, and pushed through the door their armed escort indicated. She had the domineering bit down, at least; he hadn’t even had to coach her on that.

“We’re going to have to make this quick, kids,” Cole said as he entered mere moments later, before Sark had managed a thorough survey of the space. He’d been too preoccupied the last time, though that was hardly an excuse. No help for it now; he raised his eyes to Cole and regarded him with brows arched.

“K-Directorate’s looking to make a comeback in the international arena.” He chucked a thumb under Sydney’s chin as he passed, and Sydney looked at him with precisely the right mix of pleasure and adoration.  _Good girl._  “Intel puts a top operations officer in a nightclub a few hours south  _tonight_. I need you two to figure out what the agent’s doing there.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Sark said casually, “why us? Surely this is someone else’s jurisdiction.”  _And beneath both of our abilities_ , he thought, resisting the urge to press his lips together in consternation. There was something he wasn’t quite grasping here. The Covenant hadn’t sent him on these kinds of chases in weeks, not since he and Lauren had been put in charge of the North American cell. So why now?

“That’s a great question,” Cole said, leaning back on his desk. “You ask great questions.”

It would be imprudent to thank him. Sark held his tongue, and simply waited.

“Neither of you have had a run-in with the agent before. Most of our people in this area have. Most of our people in this area used to work  _with_  her.”

“Who is this agent?” Sydney asked.

“Ana Espinosa. Hell of a woman. Very efficient operative,  _very_  dangerous. And  _hot_. Man is she hot. Hard to get to know, though. She shot me down.” Cole shook his head, and looked almost fond for a moment, to Sark’s mild disgust. But it was lucky he was distracted, as Sydney’s currently already-fair complexion had gone deathly white. He and Lauren may not have ever crossed paths with Espinosa, but Sydney Bristow obviously had.

“In the literal sense as well, or just the figurative?” Sark inquired with a bit of a sneer in his voice. It accomplished the desired task—drew Cole’s attention away from Sydney while she pulled herself together.

“Bullet to the gut,” Cole specified. He was ignoring Sark’s insult, which made Sark wary.

“Lovely.”

“Hell of a woman. You’ll report back to me here on anything you discover. I’ve got some business to attend to in the meantime, but I’ll be back tomorrow.” He stood, and looked as if he were going to dismiss them—then paused. “Oh, and Sark?”

Ah. Here it came. The things he did for Sydney. And to save his own life, of course. He cocked his head and prepared himself for whatever snide remark the man would leave him with.

“That thing outside in the hallway, with Lauren?”

Had he seen his gesture towards the— But no, of course not. The failed kiss. He meant the failed kiss.

“That was cold, man.” Cole looked amused, and a little pitying. Sark hated pity.

“Miss Reed,” Sark observed, forcing his mouth to quirk, “has her moods.”

“She does, but it looked to me like maybe you weren’t giving her what she needs.” He held his hand out to Sydney, and she went to his side. It was almost brotherly, except for the way their bodies fit together, and the way his arm went around her familiarly. Lucky for Sark he wasn’t a jealous man. Well, that wasn’t precisely true. Lucky for Sark that his own jealousy more amused him than distressed him.

“I like a challenge,” Sark replied, stiffening his posture and infusing his tone with irritation.

“Feel free to give me a ring if you want any pointers, Julian.” Cole smirked, and turned to Sydney. “We’ll talk when you two get back, baby doll,” he said as he slapped her on the rear back towards Sark. “Good luck.”

“Does our plan involve knocking Cole unconscious?” Sydney muttered once they were out of earshot of the building. “And if not, can we change it?”

Sark laughed, genuinely amused. “Your bloodthirstiness is dually noted, he responded. “I’ll see what we can do to alter the plan accordingly.” Pretending thoughtfulness, he added, “Although I’m not entirely sure I shouldn’t be the one to do it, seeing as though he insulted my ability to,” he paused, assessing the ramifications of finishing the sentence the way he wanted, and decided on the safer answer; no use spoiling the temporary truce they appeared to have entered into, “please Miss Reed.”

“He just wants to make sure you know where you stand,” Sydney said—and was that a touch of sincere compassion he heard in her voice?

“He likes that I’m cocky,” he protested, faking offense.

“Trust me, Sark.  _Nobody_  likes that you’re cocky.”

He smirked, and earned an eye roll. Remarkable woman, consummate spy, but she did persist in being ridiculously childish at times. Still, he found himself rather enjoying it in this particular instance.

“After you,” he said to her graciously, pulling open the door of the car in which they’d come.

Sydney looked like Lauren at her haughtiest as she slid into the backseat.

Sark shook his head, perfectly able but not in the mood to conceal his smile.


	13. Part 3, Act 6

She wasn’t in leather. Or vinyl or fur or any of a dozen other hideously inconvenient and uncomfortable materials she’d gotten used to wearing over the years. She wasn’t wearing a wig. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses, or ridiculously heavy jewelry  _cum_  communication devices.

She thought if Sark had mentioned that this lack of adornment was part of his “comprehensive offer” three years ago, she might have considered taking him up on it.

It wasn’t true, of course. And it was the alcohol, and the sheer  _oddity_  of the situation, that made her even think of pretending it was. Still, Sydney couldn’t help enjoying the difference as she and Sark passed through the metal detectors, were patted down—she more thoroughly than he; that at least hadn’t changed—and moved through the dark, writhing shapes of dancers to a more strategic point from which to watch the entrance for Ana’s arrival.

Ana. It was just after the pilot had announced their descent during their short flight down that Sark had asked about her—his plane, he had said, no need to keep up appearances—and Sydney hadn’t answered. Largely because she wasn’t in the habit of revealing her weaknesses to international terrorists, but also because she wasn’t sure what to say. Ana, Sydney had been told, was dead. But it appeared that Ana was only as dead as Sydney herself was: in other words, not at all.

Instead, she’d turned her head to the window, to the cloudbanks that streamed endlessly over the wing, and Sark’s voice had sounded almost offended at her silence as he needled her.

“Not a happy memory, Sydney? Why does it always seem as if you’ve had so few?”

“You’ve changed.” When she turned her gaze back to him, his expression had been as cool and unchanging as the view she’d abandoned.

His eyebrows raised. “Am I to take that as a compliment?”

He was crueler. He was bitter. He had almost as many edges as she did, now, where before he’d always been as smooth as cream, elegantly effortless. She wanted to know why. She  _needed_  to know why. She didn’t trust him—she’d never trusted him—but she’d been able to work with him before because she’d felt like she knew him. Now she didn’t know what to think. All she knew for sure was that he was loyal to her mother. It was the only thing that hadn’t changed. Including his clothes—no suit, just a black turtleneck that accented the sharpness of his chin, his cheekbones, the iciness of his stare.

Instead she said, “You used to act like you liked this. In Denpasar—”

He pressed his lips together, tilted his head back. “Of course. Of course that was you.”

“In Denpasar,” she pressed, “you looked like you were enjoying yourself.”

“And now, you are saying, I do not.” When she only waited, he said, “I was a younger man then, Sydney. It was before my time with the CIA. Some of us didn’t have the luxury of forgetting the last two years of our life.”

She ignored the taunt, though it set her teeth on edge. “What changed? Why . . . why is it different?”

He regarded her silently for a long moment. Then he said, evenly, “Because it’s personal now. It was never personal before. It was a game, and one at which I excelled.” His voice sharpened. “The same reasons,  _Agent Bristow_ , I assume it’s lost its appeal for you as well. Do you enjoy it anymore? Do you enjoy  _anything_  anymore?”

“That is absolutely none of your business.”

“I’m making it my business.” His eyes gleamed, razor sharp and as actively menacing as she’d ever seen them. “There is  _nothing_ , Sydney— _nothing_ —keeping me from turning you over to the Covenant right now in exchange for my inheritance.”

She stared at him. That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Because otherwise, why hadn’t he? “Except that I don’t have what they need from me at the moment—I’m wearing Lauren’s body.”

“And you really believe that’s all they need from you?” He laughed, humorlessly. “Please, Sydney. They’re after your mind. They, unlike I, have no idea what you do and do not remember from your time with them. What you’ve told the CIA. What missions you sabotaged during your time with them, and which, with the right information, could still be salvaged. You know both too much and too little. They’re afraid of how much ‘Julia’ knows. And they have secrets they’d pay anything to keep.”

“What are you getting at, Sark?”

“For instance. Isn’t it interesting,” he continued conversationally, “how similar Julia and Miss Reed are? Have you ever wondered about that? The parallels are stunning, really. The hair, the job description. All the things you faked, she has done for real. Killing my father, for instance.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Except you didn’t fake everything, did you. I’ve heard stories.”

Her hands clenched on the armrests. “You son of a—”

“The men you seduced for information number more than I can count. The number of men who claim to have been seduced would make you ill. You were quite the CIA whore, Agent Bristow.” He sneered. “To hear tell of it, the only enemy spy you haven’t yet fucked is me—but I’ve got a few minutes free just now, if you’re feeling so inclined.”

“I cannot begin to tell you how much you disgust me,” she spit.

But she was warm, getting warmer, her entire body vibrating with tension, with fear that he was telling the truth, with loathing for the Covenant, with panic at all the things she didn’t know about what she had been forced to do to survive. And he was regarding her now with those cool, implacable eyes, that arrogant mouth, and she did hate him, absolutely, but there was something there, in him, that called to her, too, that made her blood boil. His indifference. The knowledge he held over her. Her loss of control.

“So I ask you, Sydney:  _Do you enjoy your job?_ ”

“No,” she bit off as she felt the plane touch down on the runway, jaw tense with suppressing the urge to shove the heel of her hand into his face. “No, I do not.”

He nodded in grim satisfaction, as if he had proven something to himself. “Then let’s go have fun out there, shall we?”

Now they were sitting at the club’s glass bar having, not fun, but something not unpleasantly like it. Lights embedded in the floor shone up through the bar’s surface, lighting Sark’s face from beneath with cool blue and making him look eerier than usual. So far, Ana hadn’t made an appearance, so they were simply marking time at the bar. She felt warm, and remarkably unworried. She would have suspected Sark of drugging her again, except that she was well aware that Lauren’s alcohol tolerance was lower than her own.

She was aware of it, but she didn’t really care. She'd needed a few drinks after the tension of the plane ride—a tension that had evaporated the moment they’d departed the cabin, and left her with the sense of having been physically drained. They hadn’t spoken in the car—Sark had driven—and they had both been all business as they entered the club. _At least I could count on both of our professionalism_ , she thought darkly, looking down at her not at all CIA-sanctioned drink.

Sark sipped at his glass of red as she nursed her second pleasantly strong Cosmopolitan. Their silence had become almost companionable. She didn’t understand it, but she was willing to table thinking about it until some later, hopefully never to arrive point. They had a job to do—two jobs to do, really—and she’d rather do them like this than while at each other’s throat.

“This could be worse,” she admitted to herself under her breath.

“Pardon?” Sark asked distractedly. His gaze flickered to her face before returning to the entrance over her left shoulder.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just—“  _Just that this is almost nice,_  she thought, and was immediately irritated. This was  _Sark_  she was sitting there with. Had she been that starved for companionship lately that drinks—work drinks, no less—with an obnoxious assassin whose favorite pastimes included trying to kill her and sleeping with her soulmate’s double-agent wife was her idea of a good time?

“Just?” he inquired.

“Nothing,” she repeated, still annoyed at herself, and he shrugged.

“Have it your way, darling.”

She closed her eyes, and gritted her teeth. Of course he had to ruin it. “Don’t call me that.”

“What shall I call you instead?” he asked, reaching for his wine again and regarding her over its rim. “Sweetheart? Love? Or perhaps Mrs. Vaughn?”

Somehow his heart didn’t seem to be in the taunt; she wondered, perhaps for the first time ever when it didn’t have to do with work, what he was thinking.

She didn’t do so long, because there was a sudden, subtle change in Sark’s posture.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, instantly alert.

“I see her.”

“Is she alone?”

Sark looked grim again. “It appears so. But armed. I see a holster at her thigh.”

 _Girl’s best friend,_  Sydney thought as Sark continued.

“I don’t believe she entered through the front door.”

“And therefore bypassed the metal detectors.”

“Naughty girl,” Sark murmured. He took another sip of the wine. “She’s made contact with someone. A man. 5’7”, 200 lbs. Really horrible shoes. I don’t recognize him. Here, take a look.”

He reached for her and yanked her over and onto his lap. She almost spilled her drink.

“This is not the only way to do this,” Sydney hissed at him, relaxing into his body for their onlookers’ benefit. He was softer than she’d have thought. Less muscle. Like a seal. A seal with really great aim.

“It was the most expedient,” he said, nuzzling her neck. She hoped he was enjoying himself. No, actually she hoped he was allergic to her perfume.

“By the door?” she asked, and he responded, “She’s in red.”

Sydney focused in on them immediately, the sleek back of Ana’s head and the man in the patterned collared shirt and slacks. “I don’t recognize him either. But I recognize his shirt: it looks just like my parents’ old couch.”

“Irina had a couch that looked like that?” Sark sounded as horrified as she’d ever heard him.

She couldn’t help smiling.

She almost jumped out of her skin when his mouth touched her skin, open and warm. Obviously socializing wasn’t he only thing she hadn’t been doing enough of lately. No more Cosmopolitans on the job. No more jobs for her mother, and definitely no more jobs with Sark. Ever. 

“I’m slapping you, first opportunity,” she hissed at him, digging her nails into his thighs hard enough, hopefully, to draw blood.

“I appreciate the warning.”

Sydney tamped down on her anger. “They’re moving towards the stairs.”

“I can see that.”

“Can you? Your line of sight isn’t obscured by my breasts?”

“I’m trying to be convincing,” he protested, failing to actually look away.

“Great. You stay here and be convincing. I’m going after Ana.”

Sark slid a few bills onto the bar—no use drawing attention, she assumed; besides, it’s not like he couldn’t afford it—as she stood, and they followed the flash of Ana’s skirt. Sydney led. No one gave them a second look; maybe it was her lack of flashy wig. Or the fact her thighs were covered.

The couple slipped through a side door; Sydney and Sark followed a dozen steps behind them. Ana’s heels clicked on the stairs above them, and disappeared on the first landing. A door slammed. Sydney wished, uncharacteristically, for a gun.

“This is too easy,” Sydney said as they reached the top of the stairs and started down the dark, empty hallway, backs close against the right wall.

“This whole reconnaissance mission is beginning to concern me.”

“Trap?” she wondered aloud.

Sark frowned. “A set up of some sort, at least.”

“And I thought it was just me.”

They paused at the first door—no sound. She looked back to Sark. He shrugged. They moved on to the next.

At the fifth door they heard a muffled thumping. Sydney eased open the door—

—and found herself confronted with Ana’s smooth bare legs wound around her contact’s thankfully clothed back. She wore her dress rucked up around her thighs, and a quirk of a smile on her generous lips.

Then Sydney felt steel, cold against the back of her neck, and thought,  _Sark, damnit!_  She’d at least thought she could count on him for back up. The man was brilliant at getting his own neck out of trouble. Obviously the skill didn’t extend to his partner’s, because here she was with hers forced forward by the press of her captor’s gun.

“Thank you, Ana,” the man holding the gun said from behind Sydney’s left shoulder. “That will be all.”

Ana casually reached up, threaded her fingers through her boyfriend's hair and drove his head into the wall behind them. Then she smoothed the dress down over her thighs and left the man crumpled on the floor the way other women might a discarded blouse.

As she passed, she gave Sydney a smug, audacious wink, and Sydney felt that familiar roil of fury and frustration she always associated with the other woman. It was different from her rivalry with Sark—Sark irritated her, made her angry, and she was of course against him and everything he stood for, but her feelings were largely on a professional level. With Ana, it was personal.

But Ana had nothing with Lauren Reed. And Sydney had to remember that, at this moment, she was Lauren Reed.

“Sydney Bristow,” her captor said, and she realized she knew that voice, she hated that voice; she couldn’t believe it had taken her even this long to realize.  _Sloane._  “Won’t you step into my office?”


	14. Part 4, Act 1

Given his way, Sark would have preferred to have been knocked unconscious, dreaming perhaps of a villa in the south of France, his inheritance back in his proverbial pocket and his current partner, long-limbed and naked, in his bed.

He was not, however, quite so fortunate.

He remained painfully aware for the duration of his transfer. The men Sloane had hired handled him roughly—nothing he wasn’t used to, though it never ceased to rankle him—as they pushed him further down the hall. He caught just a fleeting glance of Sydney, Lauren’s chin lifted, stepping with a dignity that bordered on arrogance into the office Ana had just vacated.

 _Good luck_ , he wished her silently, but if anyone could handle Sloane, it was Sydney. If a man like Sloane could be said to have a weakness, she was it. Remarkable, Sark thought dryly, how many otherwise formidable agents that was true for.

He was shoved into an elevator; one of the men who accompanied him pressed the button for the basement. Why, he wondered, was it always the basement?

“I’d prefer the penthouse, if you don’t mind,” he said, recalling with fondness he and Lauren’s recent exploits and earning himself a backhand across the face.

That, he reflected clinically, was going to bruise.

Clearly this had not been his best idea ever. Perhaps he shouldn’t have contacted Irina in the first place. He could have toyed with Sydney—fed her classified Covenant data for his own amusement, stolen a kiss or two, perhaps coaxed a bit more—had his fun and acted shocked, just shocked, when it was discovered that Sydney Bristow had somehow managed to infiltrate their organization. There would still have been Lauren to contend with, of course, and he wouldn’t have had the same opportunity he did here to regain his inheritance, but he felt confident of his ability to deal with Lauren Reed, and surely another opportunity would have arisen.

Instead, here he was being summarily deposited into one of the less pleasant holding rooms he had ever graced with his presence. Certainly it was not as comfortable as the CIA’s antiseptic glass cell. As much as he’d come to loathe the excessive, colorless cleanliness of that space, some antiseptic would have been an improvement here; the space reeked unpleasantly of mold and disuse.

The door was slammed behind him—his guards hadn’t even removed the cuffs before abandoning him, though he supposed in their position he would have done the same—leaving him to his own devices. Thankfully, he had quite a few.

He set about scanning the room for possible escape routes, a tool with which to pick the handcuff locks, something at least to use as a weapon. He came up empty. The room was small, boxy, and unadorned, with no windows and a single bulb suspended far to high for him to reach. He could throw his shoe at it, potentially producing a suitably sharp sliver of glass, but odds were he’d simply shatter the glass into fragments too slight to be usable, leaving himself no more capable of escaping but far more likely to cut himself in the ensuing darkness.

There was nothing for him to do but wait for Sydney—presuming she was able, and willing, to come for him. Sloane had obviously arranged this meeting for a reason, and he was fairly confident that killing Sydney was not it. Sark had been forced to listen repeatedly to Sloane’s praise of the woman he considered the daughter he’d never had, at least once Sloane had managed to get past the intensity of his feelings regarding her and Jack’s betrayal. Sydney would be safe. Sark, on the other hand, was by no means in an analogous situation. Sloane regarded him no more highly than he himself regarded Sloane.

If, he decided, given a suitable length of time, Sydney had not yet appeared, he would give the shoe plan further thought.

Choosing to remain standing rather than risk the floor, he centered his weight evenly between his feet and began reciting times tables in his head.

He had just begun his 46s when the door burst open. Lauren Reed’s slim silhouette stood in the doorway, backed by the glow of the brighter hallway light, her hair tousled about her grim, set face. She strode purposefully over to him.

And then she slapped him.

“That,” Sydney said, “was for earlier, you bastard. Now give me your hands.”

He held out his cuffed wrists obligingly. She inserted a key and jiggled it until the lock mechanism gave way.

“You’re later than I expected,” he commented, rubbing his slightly raw wrists and ignoring the sting in his left cheek as she tucked the cuffs away at her hip.

She glared at him. “Would it kill you to be a little grateful?”

“Oh, I am,” he assured her as they moved towards the door.

It was only now that she was here, now that his confidence in her arrival had been rewarded, that he realized he had been less assured than he had been pretending. If it had been him, he would have left her there. Sydney Bristow, obviously, was not him—though she could stand to emulate some of his sense of self-preservation. Still, in this case it was better for him that she did not. He almost wished, for a spare second, that he might attribute his rescue to some modicum of affection for him on her part, or even just respect. But her actions had nothing to do with him. They had to do with her sense of honor, her idea of partnership—because regardless of who had paired them together, or why, they  _were_  partners. For the moment. And she would treat him accordingly, despite her personal feelings, and despite the fact they both knew he was not reliable and should not be trusted, even in this. Being Sydney’s partner meant the security of her protection. And as relieved as he was to be correct in his assessment, part of him had rather hoped she was smarter than that.

“Here.” She reached into the waistband at the small of her back, and handed him a firearm.

“You brought me a gun,” Sark said, absurdly touched.

“You suck at hand to hand,” she snapped. She produced a weapon of her own from the top of her boot. “I don’t think we’ll need them, but just in case. Come on.”

They moved through the hallway much as they had upstairs, low and against the wall, but this time with the added security of being adequately armed. They reached the stairwell and descended quickly, nearly silently, and Sydney was first out the door that would return them to the open space of the club where they’d began.

“Shit!”

She whirled back around the corner, pressing her back against the wall. She was trembling; fascinating. And a bit frightening.

“Sydney?” he asked.

Her lovely eyes were haunted as she focused on his face. “It’s Vaughn.”


	15. Part 4, Act 2

First her mother; then Sloane; now Vaughn. Sydney didn’t think she could take much more of this.

“What is this? ‘This is Your Life,’ the spy edition?” she muttered crossly to herself.

Sark, who had also ducked his head out to survey the club, as if he wasn’t willing to take her word for it, was now checking the number of bullets in his clip with economical efficiency. “At least your father won’t be making an appearance.”

“You better hope my father doesn’t make an appearance.”

Her back was still against the wall, and her breathing remained erratic. How were they going to get out of there without Vaughn seeing them? As much as Vaughn needed to learn of Lauren’s true allegiance, now was a really,  _really_  bad time. But he was standing by their only exit, looking achingly beautiful . . . and distracted, but not distracted enough that he’d miss his wife and a wanted terrorist waltzing past him out the door.

“Sydney, I’m surprised at you. Surely a . . . mature . . . woman like yourself has outgrown threats of telling Daddy on me.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits, turning her head sharply to her right, towards Sark. “Did you just call me old?”

He was peering out the door again; his foot was wedged into the space between the door and the frame. “You are a few years my senior, Sydney.”

“You know,  _Julian_ ,” she shot back testily, “I’ve always wondered about you and your ’82 Petrus. What is that, the year you were born?”

Sark glanced back at her severely. “If you must know, it’s the year my mother died.”

She pursed her lips. “You’re lying.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “Can we save the witty repartee for the plane ride back? We have more important things to contend with at present than the rationale behind my choice in wine.”

In other words, Vaughn hadn’t budged.

“Any ideas?” she asked.

“I presume you’d prefer your Agent Vaughn alive?”

No one could be this obnoxious on accident. It just wasn’t possible.

“Yes,” she gritted.

“I could still shoot him,” Sark offered. "It wouldn't need to be fatal."

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

“Very much.”

The bastard really looked like he meant it, too. It was suddenly three times as embarrassing that she’d been feeling almost warmly towards him earlier. She actually felt a little sick.

“Don’t worry, Sydney,” he said, and he was suddenly close enough that she could feel his breath on her mouth. “I won’t. For you.”

“Be still my heart,” she said without expression. She took a step away from him and to the side, giving herself a better view into the crowded club. Vaughn’s head was bent, the first two fingers on his right hand pressed to his earpiece.  _Who else is here?_  she wondered. Weiss? Dixon?

“Okay,” she said. “We can go back the way we came. There was a fire escape at the end of the second floor hall.”

“And risk running into Sloane’s men, who are already aware of our presence? Hardly.”

“What’s your brilliant plan then?” she demanded.

 _Vaughn_ , she thought. Then again, tight in the chest:  _Vaughn._  His presence there was making her shaky, scattered. She had to pull herself together, and she had to do it now.

Sark cocked his weapon; the sound was uncomfortably loud in the stairwell. “You distract him, and I’ll come up behind him with a gun.”

She stared at the back of his head incredulously. “ _That’s_  your plan? What am I supposed to do to distract him?”

“You’re his wife, Sydney,” Sark said mildly. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

She slid her own gun back into the waistband of her pants, near the back where it would be more difficult to detect. She wasn’t going in there unarmed; she wasn’t going to let Sark point a gun at Vaughn without having some recourse. Cataloguing possible approaches, she unfastened the buckle at the neck of her jacket and rubbed her fingers along her scalp and along the length of Lauren’s curls, fluffing them out: Lauren the way Sydney remembered her from when Sydney had first come back—all that innocence, a flower in fresh bloom, newly plucked. A lie.

Sark stepped back to let her pass. She just barely heard him murmur, “I’ll be right behind you.”

Sydney wound her way towards the door, throat tight. He wasn’t going to buy this. There was no reason for Lauren to be there. But she only had to keep him off-guard long enough for Sark to get behind him. And keep him from reporting her presence.

She knew the moment he saw her. His mouth parted; his eyes widened.

“Michael!” she exclaimed as she approached him, and caught him up in her embrace. His cheek was rough against Lauren’s skin; his arms came around her belatedly.

“Lauren—what are you doing here?”

“I’m here for my father; the NSC was done with me, and he needed someone to meet a business contact of his here, upstairs . . . What are you doing here? I couldn’t believe when I came down the stairs and saw you—”

“Where’s your briefcase?”

“My—” She gave him a puzzled smile.  _Shit._  “You aren’t happy to see me?”

“It’s not that,” he said, raising a hand to cup her face, and she indulged herself by turning her cheek into it. He was  _so warm_. She nearly closed her eyes. There were times she forgot how much she missed him. How much she still loved him.

He glanced past her, into the club. “You should get out of here; it’s not safe. Sloane passed on Covenant intel that Sark is supposed to be here tonight. So far he hasn’t shown.”

“Perhaps Mr. Sloane’s intel was incorrect.” Sark’s blond head appeared over Vaughn’s shoulder; Vaughn stiffened. “Or perhaps not.”

“I’ll come quietly,” Vaughn said, lifting his hands and looking towards the floor. “Just let Lauren go.”

Sark chuckled.  _Chuckled._  Sydney glared at him. “I don’t believe that will be necessary, Mr. Vaughn. Ms. Reed?”

“Let’s just do this,” she snapped.

Vaughn looked up at her, the shock devastating on his face. It was all she could do not to say anything, all she could do to keep the expression on her face cool. Everything in her felt like it was breaking.

“Move, Mr. Vaughn,” Sark said, prodding Vaughn with the gun he held to her ex-lover’s spine. Then his eyes widened, and focused on her. “Ms. Reed,” he said calmly. “Duck.”

Sloane’s men? The CIA? Sydney didn’t know. She ducked, rolled, and came up with her gun drawn. Sark had fired twice already, and was heading for the exit, still dragging Vaughn with him. The club filled with screams, and Sydney strove to see around patrons too panicked to get sensibly to the ground.

She aimed for the hand of the man closest to her and fired; it just nicked him, knocking the gun from his grasp. She just barely dodged a bullet to her shoulder, and got off two more shots at the shooter—the second shot hit him in the thigh. Sark hit the third man in the ribs, giving them time to make it through the door before back-up arrived.

Sark shoved Vaughn into an alley while Sydney covered them. Then she darted in behind. Sirens were just barely audible in the background.

Sark had taken a step away from their captive. “By the fire escape,” he ordered, gesturing with the gun. “Quickly, please.”

“I don’t understand.” Vaughn was looking at Sydney, only at Sydney, as if Sark weren’t even there. She knew it was Lauren he was seeing, Lauren whose betrayal marked his earnest, broken face, but she still felt helplessly guilty, and unspeakably angry.

“There’s nothing to understand, Mr. Vaughn,” Sark said calmly. “Miss Reed, if you would?”

Taking Vaughn by the arm, she yanked him closer to the fire escape and pushed him to his knees, fury filling her and making her movements harsher than she intended. She hated this situation. She hated being put in it. She took Sark’s handcuffs from her waistband where she’d tucked them earlier and, avoiding Vaughn’s eyes, fastened the first cuff on his left wrist.

“You’re working with him,” Vaughn said as she pulled the other cuff between two rungs of the ladder. His voice was coarse—with shock? With anger? With disbelief? She jammed the second cuff closed, effectively fastening him to the ladder and securing his hands behind his back.

“Well, darling?” Sark offered to her, smirk just barely gracing his lips.

She felt cold; cold and angry. Angry at Sark, angry at Vaughn, angry at herself. She stepped back to join Sark, made her voice cutting as she replied, “You always were bright, Michael.”

“You’re Covenant.”

He looked as if he was desperately trying not to believe it, as if he might, if he tried, find some other explanation for her presence there, for her actions. Sydney felt her heart breaking all over again. He really had loved Lauren.  _Did_  love Lauren, still. She could see it in his eyes, in the way he struggled with her betrayal. His throat worked with the excess of emotion.

 _Damn him._  Damn  _her._  Lauren. Sydney lifted her hand and stroked the nape of Sark’s neck, the burgeoning curls there just beginning to re-grow. She slid her hand down his chest, leaned into him, and took his mouth with her own. With Lauren’s. She’d make Vaughn hate her. Later she would rationalize that it would make it easier on him, in the long run; in the moment, she just wanted revenge.

Sark’s arm came around her—the one not holding the gun—and held her to him possessively. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, the way his chest felt pressed against her breasts, the way he took her lower lip between his teeth. But she was more concerned with the spectacle they presented, pressed close to one another, locked in passionate embrace.

She broke the kiss and looked back over her shoulder at Vaughn. It hurt him, seeing Lauren kissing Sark. She was  _glad_. “We should go,” she said to Sark.

“Aren’t you going to kiss your husband farewell?” he asked her, holstering his weapon. His eyes were slightly dilated—from her?

The look she gave him was murderous, but when she turned to Vaughn her eyes were haughty, and cruel. She walked towards him, heels of her boots clicking on the pavement. The sirens were getting louder, closer. Vaughn met her eyes, his own hard; she pulled her gun out, gripped it by the barrel, and brought the butt of it hard to his temple.

He slumped, unconscious, to the ground.

“That was quite a show,” Sark observed at her right shoulder.

“Shut up,” she said, putting her gun away. “We need to get out of here.”

“Aren’t you concerned for him? Leaving him here at the mercy of whomever finds him?”

“The CIA’s here. There’s nothing else we can do.”

Sark shrugged. “Up to you, darling.” He glanced at the entrance to the alleyway; at, Sydney presumed, the position of the sun. “I believe we still have time to reach to our rendezvous point before nightfall. Cole will be expecting our return.”

“Then by all means,” she said. She turned on her heel, and strode out of the alley, forcing herself not to turn back for one last glance. She heard Sark follow several moments after.

The sooner they could get back to Cole, the sooner they could steal the disk, the better. She didn’t care why she was doing this anymore; she just wanted it over.


	16. Part 4, Act 3

“I’ve just spoken to your mother,” Sark said as Sydney emerged, freshly showered and safely dressed in a pair of pajama pants and a white t-shirt, Lauren’s hair damp and loose around her shoulders.

He stood by the bedside table nearest the window, still in black—turtleneck, slacks, sleek and dangerous and severe. The covers of the hotel bed had been turned down, exposing the crisp white of the sheets. They were wrinkled, but just barely; he’d been sitting on them, she realized, and then realized further that she rarely thought of him sitting, when she thought of him at all. And the idea that he would later be asleep, prone, much less in a room she also occupied . . .

Sydney had tried to argue for separate rooms—the CIA would be searching for them as a couple, it would be safer if they split up—but he’d simply looked at her, and laughed, and made her wonder exactly how inept the CIA had been in the past to provoke that sort of reaction. He’d reminded her that the room was rented on the Covenant’s dime, would appear on the Covenant’s expense reports, and that it was far more important at the moment to appear to be who they said they were than to appear not to be. She had to admit he was right, at least to herself. Outwardly she’d steeled her expression and allowed him to request the single room with its full bed. And a rollaway cot.

“My wife’s been ill,” he had said, looking at Sydney, gaze full of false compassion. “She doesn’t want to keep me awake with her coughing.”

He’d taken her hand in his, then turned his soft smile on the man behind the check-in desk. Sydney had faked a few sniffles with her own apologetic smile, internally irritated. She hated playing sick; she’d never had any patience with it, even when she was a kid. Of course, her parents always knew when she was lying—it hadn’t made sense, then, or seemed fair. Now, well, it still didn’t seem fair, but at least she knew why it had been so difficult to fake successfully.

“And?” Sydney asked, lowering herself into the room’s single armchair and tucking her bare feet under her body.

“I assumed—rightly—that she would be interested in the change in our situation. And in Sloane’s appearance. Tell me, Sydney. What did he want from you?”

She was surprised he had waited this long to ask; it left her wondering if he really wanted to know the answer, because surely he knew she’d had enough time to take the truth and craft something believable from it. Or perhaps he was just curious as to how much she was willing to tell.

“He wanted to talk to me about the disk,” she said, and that much was true.

Sloane had gestured her into a chair, something older and grander than she was used to, and sat across from her, across the desk, and for a moment it felt like old times: both old times, the admiration and devotion that had characterized their relationship for so long overlayed with bitter hatred and the sour desire for revenge. He skipped preliminaries, which she wouldn’t have responded to anyway, and went right to the subject at hand. They could work together—procure the disk, extract Lauren and make the switch. That would be easier. Or she could remain his prisoner until the disk was safely in his possession.

“Why even bother bringing me here?” she had demanded. “If you can get the disk on your own, why involve me at all?”

“Knowing how you feel about me?” Sloane smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the edges. 

“Yes.”

She knew the signs of his misdirection: the inflection of his voice, the shift in his shoulders. She’d spent months studying it, learning its particularities. If he had an answer, it wasn’t one he would share with her.

“Sydney, I would never want for you to be . . . to have to remain in your present situation. I would like your help, yes. I’ve missed working with you. I’ve missed . . . what we used to share. But either way you decide, you will be returned to your body. I promise you.”

“Because your word,” she said, “is so reliable.”

He looked injured. Perhaps he was. But she’d learned that his feelings weren’t a reliable indicator of his actions. They were false, and hollow. “Sydney, I wish there was some way for you to trust me again.”

“There’s not.”

Their eyes met, hers hard but his—even harder, a battle of wills taking place in the contact. He gave in first, stood, and turned towards his left, lightly picking up the single picture frame that sat on his desk. Sydney could just barely make out the image: a woman, dark-haired. It wasn’t Emily.

“I knew you and Mr. Sark were going after the disk,” he said, looking down at her. “I couldn’t allow that.”

“So you set up this meet. Told the Covenant Ana was going to be here.”

When he turned to gaze out the window, she palmed the letter opener left on the desk, slid it up into her sleeve.

“I was just doing my job as Covenant informer,” he said, voice rich with an amusement she could only describe as smarmy and a flair she despised. “I informed.”

“I can’t do this without Sark,” she found herself saying. “He’s the one who knows the facility. What did you do with him?”

Sloane looked as bemused at her question as she felt, as if this were an aspect he’d neglected to take into account. She didn’t blame him; she wouldn’t have. “He’s secured. You don’t need him to get the disk. Or Lauren. You’d have more access to McKennas Cole’s headquarters alone, and I have assets ready to ‘rescue’ Ms. Reed at my word.”

It was only then that the thought occurred to her. Anger flared up in her, almost blinding. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew that Lauren was . . .”

“Covenant? Yes. I’ve known for months now. Since I became a double agent for the CIA.”

“You’ve never worked for anyone but yourself,” Sydney spit, fingering the end of the letter opener, tamping down on her desire to use it. She had to pick her moment carefully. She wouldn’t get more than one opportunity.

“My work,” he said, coming around to lay a hand on the back of her chair, “has always been in service of something greater.”

“Rambaldi,” Sydney said, allowing all the loathing she felt come fully into her eyes.

She could feel the sudden tension, the shutting off of his emotions, more than see it; his eyes were dark and cold and harder than she’d ever seen them. “Work with me, Sydney. Or against me. It’s your choice.”

“I’ll take against, thanks.”

She stabbed the letter opener into his hand. The force of it knocked the chair to the floor. The picture frame fell, slid across the room. She grabbed his wrist and twisted until he was down on his knees. Yanking both his arms behind him, she pressed the dull edge of the metal to his throat.

“Tell me,” she hissed. “Tell me what all this is really about.”

His voice was hideously calm, considering the situation. Inexorable.

“I never wanted you to have to know this, Sydney. But before your mother . . . left . . . she and I had an affair . . .”

Forcing herself back to the moment, Sydney turned her eyes to Sark. “I believe my mother has a mole inside her operation. Or you do.”

Sark returned her gaze, the intention in his expression unreadable. “Sloane thought he could convince you to hand the disk over to him?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t agree.”

“No.”

“And why is it, Sydney, that I should believe you? Considering the fact he just . . . let you go?”

“He didn’t just  _let_  me do anything,” she fired back. But her own doubts nagged at her. It shouldn’t have been that easy to escape. It was almost as if he’d wanted her to. Left the letter opener out, made himself as vulnerable as possible.

Sark was watching her cynically.

“I would  _never_  work with that son of a bitch,” she swore. “I’d rather work with—”

“Me?” Sark looked amused.

“It was too easy,” she admitted, and he nodded in acknowledgement.

“You should get some sleep,” he said after a few moments. “Tomorrow may be . . . trying.”

He collected his jacket from the foot of the bed where it had been carefully draped. His hand was on the doorknob before she spoke.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” he said—not unkindly. It was simply a statement. “I shouldn’t be long.”

She surveyed the room briefly for comestibles. Only the poorly stocked mini-bar. “Did you drug anything this time?”

He laughed, a staccato sound that, strangely, warmed her. “Hardly, Sydney.” And then he left her to her troubled thoughts, the look on Vaughn's face, and the weight of Sloane’s revelation.

*

It was hours later before he returned to the hotel room. He slid the card into the reader, waited for the light to flicker green, then pushed the door open. The room was dark; he could just make out Sydney’s—Lauren’s—form tangled up in the covers of the bed. Latching the door, he shed his coat and unbuckled his belt. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled his shirt off, and his shoes as well.

He nudged Sydney’s shoulder. “Sydney. Move over.”

Her eyes opened sleepily; the face she wore was lovely and lax. “Why?”

Mild irritation. “Because you’ve taken up the entire bed.”

Her gaze flickered to the cot, still folded up by the wall.

“I’m not sleeping on the bloody cot,” he told her. He’d only requested it to keep her from murdering him in the hotel lobby. If she felt so strongly,  _she_  could take the cot.

“Hold on,” she murmured as she extricated her legs from the blankets. The fabric of her pants had ridden up, baring Lauren’s cool, slim calves. Finally free, Sydney scooted over towards the window, and turned her back on him. Most of the covers, predictably, went with her.

Shaking his head, he slid in beside her. A warning tug on the coverlet yielded his share, and he pulled them around himself gingerly, careful not to touch his ever-appealing bedmate. He was troubled from his errand. He’d thought he had outgrown feeling soiled from his work almost a decade previous, but the world never ceased to surprise him. It was one of the things he rather despised about it. He preferred the predictable. Which may have been, he allowed, what appealed to him so much about Sydney Bristow. He could always count on her anger, and her scorn.

Settling onto his back, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.

“I’ve always wondered what you’d sleep in,” Sydney murmured. She shifted beside him, turning until she was laying on her back as well.

He turned his head. “You’ve thought about me in bed.” That was somewhat heartening.

“I had this dream once,” she continued in that same low, drowsy tone, “where I snuck into your room in the middle of the night.”

He’d had that dream as well. “And?” he inquired.

“And then I killed you.” She rolled her head to the side, towards him. “You were wearing boxer briefs.”

He looked up to the ceiling, thinking,  _Heaven help me_ , and closed his eyes. “In black, I presume?”

“Of course,” she said. And then, “Sark?”

He had barely reopened his eyes when she was bent over him, kissing him, mouth soft, curls brushing against his cheek and teasing at his throat.

“I want you to show me,” she said, breath was warm across his lips, “how Lauren likes to be touched.”

Of their own accord, his hands came up and fisted in her hair, holding her mouth to his. Familiar contours—but an unfamiliar feeling, the seeking way they met his own, the blind need in their trembling. He found himself stirred to tenderness, a thing he’d never felt with Lauren and a thing he’d never thought to associate with the woman now in his arms.

“Sydney,” he tried to say, pressing her hair back away from Lauren’s face, cradling her head in his hands.

“I need to know,” she insisted, eyes gleaming with determination, and tears. “I need to know what she’s really like.”

She wet her lips, and he groaned, relented, pulled her mouth back to his. The taste of her was twice as intoxicating in the dark. He couldn’t say no. Not to her; not like this. Not after tonight. Her mouth was a redemption for sins he hadn’t yet committed, for betrayals he was yet to undertake.

“Lay back,” he said in hushed tones, urging her back to her side of the bed and coming up onto one elbow. “And take off your shirt.”

Her eyes were solemn as she sat up, lifting the fabric over her head and exposing Lauren’s breasts to the air. He let his fingers glide over her collarbone, the swell of her breasts, used his hand to guide her back to the mattress. He forgot sometimes how truly lovely Lauren was. He did not desire her because she was beautiful; he never had. He desired her because she was deadly, and efficient, with an economy of movement that was attractive for its polish and its razor-sharpness. She didn’t like him to tell her she was beautiful; she got enough of that, he assumed, from Agent Vaughn. Or else she didn’t, and his use of the words only reminded her of what she wasn’t receiving at home. At her failure to do her job properly.

“Lauren,” he murmured, laying his hand lightly across the flutter of her stomach, “prefers it fast.”

In one fluid movement, he straddled her, slid his fingers beneath the waist of her pajama bottoms, and yanked them down over her hips. Parting her thighs with his palms, he drove his thumb into her.

“And hard.”

Her back arched off the bed, and Sydney gasped. A hot feeling of gratification filled him at the sound. And at the slickness of her body. Still working his thumb, he slid the pants free of her legs.

He lowered his mouth to her belly; her skin was still soft and warm with sleep. Delicious. He couldn’t dwell on it. Shouldn’t. He could see her apprehension already warring with her desire, with the responses of her body, and if he didn’t move quickly he’d miss his chance entirely. He leaned up, sliding his hand from between her legs and up her torso, licking up the column of her neck, brushing his lips along her jaw.

She caught his hand in hers, squeezed his fingers so tightly they began to tingle. Lack of circulation. “Tell me what to do,” she whispered.

She was asking for his help; she was putting her trust in him. She needed him.

“Turn over,” he breathed into her ear.

He’d never considered himself a shallow person—both beauty and identity, in his world, were only skin deep—but still he was surprised to find himself more moved, more stirred, by Sydney’s presence in his bed than by her body’s. He smoothed his hands along her back, thumbs tracing the contour of her spine, then fanned them out over her hips. Sliding his fingers beneath her, he lifted. She came willingly. Settling her on her knees, he unfastened his pants and pushed them down. Finally disrobed, he hesitated.

“Sark,” she said, “I don’t know how she’d—”

His stomach turned; he was rock hard and waiting and just the sight of her there, wet, yearning, made him feel light-headed. He squeezed his eyes shut, and wished he weren’t so pathetically vulnerable this way, with a woman beneath him. He wished he were colder.

“Just be Sydney,” he choked out.

“Sydney would never let you do this.”

Sudden fury blinded him, and made him harder. Bracing himself on one arm, he grasped her by the hair, yanked it back until she gave a started, strangled gasp, until he could see her face, until she could see his.

“Sydney is.”

Her eyes flashed fire for long seconds in which he nearly feared for his life. And then they settled into embers, complicity plain in a way it never had been when Lauren wore that face, and he released his grip on her curls, pushing them to one side of her neck to kiss her there. She bent her head to let him.

“Lauren,” he said, “is nothing like you. She’s less bright than she believes, less deadly, but has an unlimited capacity to deceive. She has a tendency to let her feelings of self-pity compromise her work, and an inability to accept responsibility for her mistakes. She enjoys causing pain.”

Sydney laughed, shortly, disbelievingly, distractedly. “And you don’t?”

She was straining back against him, breathing shallow, trying to force him into her, but he held himself rigidly apart. He’d finish this. He’d give her what she desired.

“I enjoy the things causing pain occasionally accomplishes. Lauren enjoys the process. And she has a way with a man’s heart that you will never be able to achieve. That’s all you need to know.” He spread her thighs, stroked her open, inhaled the familiar musk of Lauren’s body. “Forget about her.

And as he thrust himself inside of her—sweet, sweet heat, familiar yielding flesh braced newly against his hips—he hoped for her sake that she could.


	17. Part 4, Act 4

Sydney strode up the walk to Cole’s St. Petersburg facility, eyes shielded behind the large-lensed sunglasses Sark had provided her along with two aspirin and a glass of tepid tap water when she’d awoken that morning. How he knew she’d need them had been beyond her, until she saw the rows of tiny, empty liquor bottles perfectly arranged beside the television . . . and, of course, remembered the night before.

He had been sitting beside the bed, already impeccably dressed: linen suit, jacket open. His expression was cool and unapproachable. He looked the way he used to before she’d gone missing, and it gave her a visceral sense of security—the way pictures of Francie did, and the neighborhood where Sydney used to live—but also fear, because this was not the Sark who she had been with the night before, the Sark who’d kissed her stomach, who’d let himself go beneath her, head thrown back as he groaned out his release.

“Cole’s expecting us in a few hours,” he’d said as she set the glass on the nightside table and tucked her hair behind her ears.

She looked up at him, and tried a smile. “All right.”

But he only nodded curtly, and stood. “I’ll wait for you downstairs. There are fresh towels by the sink.”

So she’d been left alone to wash the evidence of the night before from Lauren’s thighs, to soak the residual soreness from Lauren’s body. She dressed mechanically in muted blue gray and low black heels, and pulled Lauren’s hair back into a low ponytail. She felt heavy.

She’d thought . . . well, there had been a number of things she’d thought. That Sark had absurdly lovely hands, and that his voice in the dark was one of the most erotic things she’d ever heard. That her life couldn’t possibly get any more bizarre than this. That she was  _lonely_. But swirling among these others, the one that she used to justify her actions, was that being with him might make him trust her.

She’d done some thinking while Sark was gone—before the drinking. And after. With Sloane’s revelation, which she believed mainly on the strength of how ludicrous it was, came questions she knew she could never answer on her own. Sark, she thought, she might be able to use.  _“I almost think of her as a mother myself,”_  he’d said of Irina, once. He knew so much about her that Sydney did not. And about the disk, and it’s purpose. So she’d used him: professionally, personally. The two were, as he’d implied, the same for her now. She couldn’t keep the one from bleeding into the other. Her life had been hemorrhaging ever since Danny’s death, and nothing she did seemed to stop it.

Except Sark seemed more distant than before. She’d miscalculated. The discomfort of being wrong, of feeling stupid, made her irritable, clotted her with guilt.

Sark had coffee for her, black—the way her mother liked it—and her coat, when the elevator opened. She accepted both. Neither of them spoke.

And hadn’t spoken since. A few clipped instructions, confirmation that Sydney knew her part. The silent agreement between them seemed to be to finish this as quickly as possible. They were awkward in the small space of the plane, and Sydney had retreated behind the relative privacy of the sunglasses as soon as she was able. If he wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened, well, that was fine with her. She’d tried to seduce him, callously, for her own devices—and she’d failed. He’d been right—she wasn’t Lauren. She couldn’t  _be_  Lauren. The thought hurt more than it should have.

She was going in alone. She understood why, and agreed, but it felt insanely vulnerable. It was testament to years of agency missions that it made her wish she was wearing something tighter, lower cut. She’d grown so used to using her body to achieve her objectives that she felt naked in someone else’s. Though she’d certainly used Lauren’s well enough the night before.

“I’m early,” she announced herself in Lauren’s clipped tones. “I need to see Cole immediately.”

She was accommodated, as Sark had known she would be. Cole met her in the hallway leading to his inner sanctum, the overfurnished hodgepodge of pattern and period she hoped that, after this, she would never have to see again.

“Ms. Reed!" he greeted her in the hallway. He was wearing a suit that, as well as it was obviously tailored, looked awkward on him, made his shoulders look like a scarecrow’s and his face somehow that much more pinched. “Where’s your partner in crime?”

“I left him asleep in bed,” she said flippantly. “He should be here eventually. I wanted to speak to you before he arrived.”

“By all means,” he replied, with a smirk that made her skin crawl. She glanced at the men who followed a discreet few feet behind them.

“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to discuss this privately.” She garnished her words with one of Lauren’s secret little smiles, the kind Sydney used to watch her give Vaughn across the rotunda conference table.

“Well now.” Cole paused and looked her up and down. “You and Julian have a lover’s tiff?”

His voice was light, but with an ominous undertone that made her recall Sark’s earlier implications: that Lauren’s job was to keep an eye on him, and report back to Cole.

“We had a disagreement, yes.” Sydney chose Lauren’s words carefully. “Nothing . . . professional.”

“Mmm.” Cole tapped his mouth in a thoughtful manner. “Then what did you need to speak to me about?”

Sydney put on a pout. “You aren’t happy to see me?” That she’d used the very same ploy with Vaughn—and more successfully, judging by the indifference in Cole’s eyes—made her sick.

“I’m always happy to see you, baby,” Cole said congenially, but made no move toward her. It figured—he only wanted what he couldn’t have. Lauren apparently held no interest for him, at least not at the moment. And that didn’t help her at all.

So she gave that tactic up, and moved to the next one. “Julian told you about last night.” She gave the impression of probing him for information, but she knew exactly what Sark had told him—and what he had not. “That we were compromised. That my cover was blown.”

“Yeah, tough break with Mr. Vaughn.”

Sydney hoped that wasn’t his version of compassion. He sounded distracted, and mocking. But he always sounded mocking.

“He didn’t tell you, did he, who captured us.”

Now she had his attention.

“He said he didn’t see.”

“He didn’t.” She folded her arms. “But I did.”

“ _And_ , Ms. Reed?” The menace he was suddenly projecting was startling, and somehow familiar. But she couldn’t remember where from. Certainly not his failed attempt at taking down SD-6.

Sydney raised her chin, then said the magic words. “It was Sloane.”

Cole shifted abruptly to their escorts. “You can go.” Then, “My office,” he said to her before turning tersely down the hall, leaving her to keep pace.

“Sloane,” Cole repeated, yanking off his suit coat and pushing up the sleeves of his white button down as he shut the door behind her. She barely shifted out of his way before he slammed his fist into the wood. His face had been contorted with pure, undiluted fury, but when he faced her, his expression was absolutely even, absolutely controlled. “Tell me.”

“He wanted me to help him get the Rambaldi disk,” Sydney said, giving him the story she and Sark had agreed upon. “He said if I didn’t cooperate he’d expose me to the CIA. But I don’t believe that was ever his real intention. I managed to escape and retrieve Sark, but the CIA was waiting at the exit. He set us up. He set  _me_  up.” Her fury wasn’t hard to manage, not when Sloane was involved.

“Sark doesn’t know any of this.”

“None,” she confirmed. She risked moving a step closer to him, praying he was to distracted to pay attention. She shift the ring with which Sark had furnished her until the gem’s façade was pressed firmly against the palm of her clenched fist. “He believes that I managed to free myself as they were locking me up. I told him I didn’t recognize the men escorting me. That I had no more answers than he did.”

“Good work.” Cole’s hand was already moving to the inside pocket of his jacket—to his cell phone. That wasn’t good. She couldn’t have a witness, even if only on the other end of the phone line.

He pressed a few buttons, and Sydney caught the sound of the first ring. “So Sloane’s working with the CIA. For real. That bastard. I knew he wasn’t worth trusting, not even in—Yes? Get me—” He paused, put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Ms. Reed, can you excuse me for a moment?”

 _Shit_ , she thought. And then again for good measure: _Shit._

She smiled, using one of Lauren’s most disingenuous. She flipped open the top of the ring. “Of course,” she said—and laid her hand on his bare forearm.

“What—” he began, doubtlessly feeling the prick. She followed it up with the heel of her left hand to his face, and hoped she’d shoved the cartilage of his nose right into his brain. Between that and the drug the ring had injected into his system, he dropped, and she was standing, staring down at McKennas Cole’s prone body, breathing heavy, hands trembling. 

She’d taken satisfaction in hurting him, more than she’d expected. And she hadn’t been thinking of Lauren, of being Lauren; she’d been thinking of Julia.

She bent and retrieved the phone where it had fallen out of Cole’s hand.

“Cole’s been called away,” she said, completely calm, professional. Deadly. “There was a perimeter breach.”

Cursing on the other end. She didn’t recognize the voice. Male, though. And Russian. “Do you know why he called?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Have him get in touch with me,” the man said curtly, and the call was disconnected. She dropped the phone on top of Cole’s limp form.

She took the ear piece from her jacket pocket and slid it into her ear. “Sark. I’ve taken care of Cole.”

“Already?” He sounded startled, and slightly impressed. She heard the clatter of computer keys.

Banter, she decided. Banter was familiar; it reminded her of herself. Not Lauren. And not Julia. Julia was always serious.

“Turns out there are worse things than kissing you,” she told him, and already she felt calmer, clearer.

“I’m flattered,” he responded, and she could almost  _hear_  the smirk.

It seemed as if he’d gotten over whatever had kept him cool and silent that morning, and Sydney was glad. She’d take last night’s Sark over that morning’s any day. Last night’s Sark seemed . . . human. Which didn’t matter, really—the choices he made, the things he did, were the same no matter how human he appeared—but it comforted her all the same. And she’d take comfort anywhere she could get it these days. The night before was a prime example of that.

“The disk?” she asked, tucking the ends of her hair into a loose bun.

“Vault 6627. It’s in the fourth room on the right in the northern wing.”

“The blue one?” She was already shedding the skirt, leaving her in a pair of black lycra pants, and replacing her heels with black ballet slippers.

“The vent above the door should take you there directly. I’ll meet you there.”

No _good luck_ , she noticed. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Already she felt the rush of adrenaline in her veins, limbering up her muscles, readying her for whatever came next. Braced on the edge of the table she’d pulled over in front of the door, she used the silver disk of her right earring to unscrew the vent plate before lowering it to the table. Then she pulled herself up, Lauren’s muscles screaming, and into the ventilation system. Familiar surroundings: silver, square, barely large enough for her to comfortably crawl. Once safely inside, she paused to get her bearings and let her eyes adjust to the diminished light.

 _Not much longer,_  she thought, and took a deep shuddering breath.

Then she steeled herself, and started to crawl.


	18. Part 4, Act 5

Sydney found her way to the northern wing more easily than she had anticipated. It was a good thing, too, because once there she found her way blocked by a metal grate, its grid too tight to admit her hand but loose enough to let the air through. Only a few feet further and she could have been safely inside the correct hallway, directly across from the vault. There was a reason spies didn’t, as a rule, infiltrate facilities run by other spies, and she was looking right at it.

She took a brief moment to rethink her approach. No way through the grate; she didn’t have the tools to cut through it or melt it away, though she did feel safe in assuming Sark would have disabled any noise or heat detection apparatus in the vicinity. She’d have to go in the old fashioned way—through the front door.

Silently, she moved backwards through the conduit until she had a view of the door guard—or the top of his head, at least—through the slatted vent mounted in the wall. Her unconventional entrance had let her bypass the external door, she recalled from the blueprints. It was  _supposed_  to have let her bypass both doors. There was only one guard here at the inner checkpoint; either thecy felt secure enough in their perimeter security that more seemed redundant, or there was more to the system than met the eye. Either way, she had to make a decision, and quickly.

“Seven and a half minutes,” Sark had told her that morning, handing her the earrings and a loaded glock. “That’s all I’ll be able to arrange.”

“I work fast,” she’d assured him grimly.

He’d smiled, faintly. “I’m well aware.” She hadn’t known how to take that.

Now she inhaled deeply and, with the expulsion of her breath, brought her feet up and kicked out the vent.

The clatter mingled with the surprised cry from the guard and Sydney fell to the ground bare moments after, jarring her feet through her shoes' thin leather soles. Shifting her weight, she brought her right leg up and across in a smooth arc that knocked the gun off-aim, diverting the fire into an empty corner. She delivered a snap-kick to the man’s head, which took him down, and dove for the weapon.

Whirling, she aimed the rifle at the door, chest heaving, breath echoing painfully in her ears. Nothing. There was nothing.

Then the door cracked.

She had the trigger halfway depressed before she realized it was Sark.

He looked . . . irritated. “Aren’t you supposed to be in there already?”

As if she wasn’t standing there—well, crouching there—pointing a gun at him. As if he hadn’t been one slightly slower reflex away from getting shot. She had half a mind to shoot him anyway.

She picked herself off the floor and tossed him the gun. “Change of plans,” she said shortly. “Lock picks?”

He raised his eyebrows.

Impatiently, she added, “Unless you want to do it?”

“Front left pocket,” he told her, amusement playing at the corners of his mouth. Eyes still on her, he lifted the gun and aimed it at the door. “Well, Sydney? You’re wasting time.”

 _Bastard_ , she thought, but it didn’t have the sting it usually did.

She slid her left hand into his pocket, fingers brushing unavoidably against his hipbone as she worked her way down to the bottom. She glanced up at him as she closed her hand around the tools; it was a mistake. His eyes were lidded as he watched her, lips slightly parted.

She swallowed. Hard. “You’re not watching the door,” she said, and was distantly horrified at how husky her voice sounded.

“No,” he murmured. “I’m not.”

He was going to kiss her. She had to do something.

Just then: “Robert, what’s—”

Sark fired. Hand still in his pocket, Sydney jerked her head to the side in time to see a second guard fall to his knees, shock on his face, dark spot blooming across his stomach. She looked back to Sark, who held the gun calmly in his grip.

“Quickly,” he recommended, and she snatched her hand back and went to work on the lock.

Twenty seconds later she was tucking the metal picks into her waistband and turning the knob. The door opened easily. “Let’s go,” she said.

The doorway opened up on a high-ceilinged hallway dominated by large, inset metal doors. Sydney caught sight of the vent she had intended to enter through, high on the wall on the right.

Sark stopped at the third door on the left, and it was her turn to man the gun as he clamped the electronic decoder onto the door, over the keypad. This was how it had been arranged: in such a way that neither of them would be able to complete the mission on their own. Or rather, so that Sydney couldn’t. While her presence made Sark’s work easier, she doubted it was essential. She could have performed the whole operation herself, had she been familiarized with the device he was using to disengage the lock. But she hadn’t been, probably for precisely that reason. Her mother, she’d learned, left as little as possible to chance. Sark was obviously the same way. Sydney wondered if he’d learned that from her.

“It can’t access the signal,” he murmured, studying the readout, hitting several numbers in sequence. “We’ll have to drill.”

He wasn’t looking at her; he was focused on the device, and the small steel drill now burrowing almost silently into the surface of the door. One hole completed, he deftly swung it around and began drilling on the pad’s other side.

“Are you always this chatty on missions?” Sydney asked. She adjusted her grip on the rifle and glanced over at his progress.

“Must be the company,” he returned equitably, plugging an attachment into each of the freshly made holes.

She decided her focus was better kept on the hallway.

After a few moments she heard the sound of the lock snapping back, and then the release of pressure as the door was opened.

“Ladies first.”

Sydney left the gun on the center table and approached the properly numbered box. Taking the small container Sark handed her, she sprayed the lock, then withdrew one of the lock picks from her waistband and inserted it into the keyhole. A quick jerk of her wrist and the lock came out in her hands, and it was easy work to pull the metal façade open and reveal the box inside.

Sark slid it out, opened the top, and Sydney lifted the disk. This time she was careful to wrap it completely, and tuck it securely into the bag around her waist. She deposited her gloves into the bag Sark provided.

“Wouldn’t want to wake up as you tomorrow morning,” she muttered to herself as he sealed them in.

“At least you’d still recognize the bed.”

There was nothing productive she could say to that.

“We have three minutes,” Sark said as they reached the point at which they’d entered. The gun was strapped over his shoulder and she was unencumbered once more. “I suggest you take the opportunity to download the files you agreed to this whole charade for in the first place, and meet me outside.”

She stared at him, sucked in her cheeks. “How did you—?”

“Please, Sydney.” His tone was withering. He offered his hands; she stepped into them and he boosted her up to the vent.

Inside, she turned to look down at him. “What are you going to do?”

A smile flashed over his face. She read the satisfaction—the delight—in it like an open book. “I’m going after my inheritance.”

She lowered herself back onto the table in Cole’s room with a minute thirty to spare. Hefting Cole up by his armpits, she dragged him over to the desk and pressed his palm to the reader. Immediately the screen began to scroll, and she let his body slump.

*

Nearly a minute later she pulled the office door shut behind her, smiled carelessly at the guards as she bent to slide her second shoe onto her foot.

“He doesn’t wish to be disturbed,” she instructed, hair falling over her shoulders, files encoded on the second silver disk swinging from her ear.

They only watched her go.

Sark was waiting for her at the front of the building. She opened the car door and stepped inside.

“Well?” he asked as he drove off, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. The chauffeur’s cap nearly obscured his eyes.

“Got it.” She unlatched the silver disk from the earring’s hook and tucked it into the case inside her purse. She took the matching one out of her other ear. “You?”

His smile was mirthless now, bleak. “Oh yes.”

She didn’t understand—his words, or the change in his tone—but the window came up between them before she could ask. Obviously he wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Instead, she folded her hands in her lap. Her fingers were trembling slightly. Finally. Finally she had the answers she’d been looking for. What she’d done. Who she’d killed. Who she’d been . . . or at least pretended to be. She wanted to know. As afraid as she was of the answers—because every new layer she scratched the surface of, every time she went deeper, the story just became more horrible, and more horrifying—she still needed desperately to know. But she’d wait for her father before she accessed the files. He deserved to be there. She needed him to be there.

And by tomorrow, he would be. She’d be back in her own body, and she and her father would be on their way back to LA. If Irina was telling the truth. And she had no reason not to be. She’d have what she wanted.

Sydney touched the bag still strapped securely to her waist, reassured by its weight. She’d fulfilled her part of the bargain. Now it was up to Irina to fulfill hers.


	19. Part 4, Act 6

The first thing Irina did as Sydney entered the study was embrace her. Sydney slanted her eyes toward Sark—Sydney wondered what she was looking for—but he studiously refused to meet her eyes as he brushed past them into the room. Gingerly, she lifted her hands and lay them on her mother’s back. Closing her eyes, she breathed her in, relaxed into her arms, and remembered, painfully, how good it felt to be held.

“I’m sorry,” Irina said throatily, pulling back until she only gripped Sydney’s arms. Sydney felt the loss immediately, in ways she thought she’d gotten over years before. It was an effort, but she kept the surfeit of emotion from her eyes. Irina smiled sadly before releasing her entirely and taking a step back. “Welcome back, Mr. Sark.”

“Irina,” he returned evenly. Irina ignored his tone; maybe she was used to his moods. If he even had moods. She’d never have suspected he did before, but this afternoon was changing her mind.

Irina circled back around the heavy desk. “I trust you both were successful?”

“Naturally,” Sark responded as Sydney unfastened the pouch from her waist and passed it over to her mother before stepping back beside Sark.

If Irina noticed she didn’t comment. Instead, she observed, “You’ll be wanting to return to your own body and the CIA.”

“Yes,” Sydney said, only the force of her will keeping her from looking over at the still eerily subdued Sark.

“It’s late. I hope you’ll stay here the night at least. The switch . . . may have adverse effects.”

“I’ll have a room made up,” Sark spoke up, and before Sydney could open her mouth to object, he added, “In the event you do decide to take your mother and I up on our offer.” He smiled carelessly. “Better to be safe than sorry.”

Safe, Sydney thought cynically, and swallowed her pride, her misgivings. “All right,” she assented; then, difficultly, “Thank you.”

Sark’s nod was crisp; he’d changed on the plane, into the familiar suit and tie, and his manner had shifted with his clothing. He was her mother’s, now, and it galled her that she cared.

“Have Lauren brought up,” Irina instructed him, and they shared a look that Sydney couldn’t interpret—and frankly, didn’t have the energy to. Her mother looked at her as Sark passed silently though the door. “Sydney. I’m so glad you’re back safe.”

“Me too.” Sydney gave her the beginning of a smile.

“I have space prepared,” Irina told her. “I’ll take you there.”

Sydney was conscious of the distance between them, and how carefully Irina preserved it. It was a fragile barrier, but a pointed reminder of their relationship. As always in her mother’s presence, Sydney had to fight against blurting out her questions, which always seemed endless in their detail but so simple in their general thrust: why? If Irina was the question, then perhaps Sydney was to be the answer. But that didn’t fit, not quite. What Sloane had told her, however, did, and Sydney wanted nothing more at that moment than to confront Irina with it, to brandish her new knowledge like a weapon.

Instead, she said, “Thank you.”

With another of those soft, infinitely sad smiles, Irina touched Sydney’s arm just lightly. Sydney ducked her head and followed her out of the room.

The “space” Irina had referred to was another below-ground room, this one less well lit. “What I’ve learned about the disk makes me believe it to be sensitive to light,” she explained as she opened the door.

“And that’s why the switch happened at night, while Lauren and I slept, instead of earlier,” Sydney inferred.

“Yes.”

“M-mom?” Sydney stuttered on the word, and then gritted her teeth to steady herself. “Do you know—I mean, why Lauren?”

“I was hoping,” Irina said, “that you would be able to tell me.”

Sydney studied her mother’s face: the deceptive openness, the earnest furrow of her forehead, the soft set of her mouth. Was she always this calm? Sydney wondered, awed again by how little she really knew about the woman who’d given birth to her. Irina tilted her head slightly under Sydney’s scrutiny, but didn’t speak.

“I have no idea,” Sydney said finally, turning her head away. The only thing she could think of was that it was secretly what she wanted, that it had been Sydney’s desire—for Vaughn, for her old life back, for everything it felt like Lauren had taken away from her—that had done it. But to say so . . . . The guilt was suffocating. And the concept was ridiculous. She hadn’t swapped bodies with Lauren because she’d  _wanted_  to.

Then she remembered. “No, wait. On the plane, on the way back from Budapest. Vaughn and I, we . . . .”

Irina’s eyebrows raised.

“We shared a water bottle,” Sydney finished on a hard note. “I mean, I drank from his. And he and Lauren . . . . Do you know what the disk was intended for? Is there any chance it could have something to do with genetic material?”

“Then why swap with Lauren?” Irina asked. “Why not Vaughn? And the amount of DNA in saliva, Sydney—”

“Is almost nothing, I know.” Sydney’s brow creased. “But is it—possible?”

“We’ll have you and Lauren drink from the same container,” Irina said. “We should replicate the original circumstances as closely as possible.”

“If that doesn’t work?”

“We’ll try other things until it does. Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’d never let anything happen to you.”

No, Sydney reflected, Irina was rarely passive when it came to the things that disrupted Sydney’s life. Irina never “let” those things happen; usually, she engineered them.

Lauren’s muffled curses reached the room before she did.

Irina broke her gaze from Sydney’s in order to oversee the process of securing Lauren. “Tie her to the chair,” Irina instructed the two men who half-carried Sydney’s body into the room. “I want her hands in front, where I can see them. Legs bound separately.”

Lauren glared from underneath Sydney’s dark, matted hair, but she was silent. Her resentment, her hatred, her anger, filled the room more surely than her voice ever could. Her shoulder, Sydney noted, was freshly bandaged, and her shirt had been changed to something loose, cotton and sleeveless.

Irina caught the direction of her gaze. “It’s healing cleanly,” she said gently. “She’s been given enough drugs to let you sleep comfortably through the night.”

The pain wasn’t what concerned her; it was her ability to fight. But she’d escaped her mother’s compound with a gunshot wound before. She could certainly escape Sark’s, if it became necessary, now. With her father. Everything was under control.

“Rest,” Irina suggested. “I’ll bring back everything we need.”

Sydney nodded, and wrapped her arms around her body, unsteady, insecure, oddly on the edge of tears. Irina wanted her to  _rest_?

It was then that Lauren spoke, and Sydney remembered with a jolt that she wasn’t alone. “You’re worried about being able to leave this place.” She said it quietly, without lifting her head.

Sydney didn’t answer, but Lauren must have felt Sydney’s eyes on her, because she continued.

“You need an ally.”

“You?”

Lauren made a sound like a snort, and irritation burned behind Sydney’s eyes. “Please.”

“Not my mother.”

“Of course not,” Lauren snapped. As if Sydney were stupid.

Sydney pressed her lips together, and wondered what game Lauren was playing now. “Sark.”

“He’s not perfect, you know. He can be used,” Lauren said. “You can use him.”

She fixed Sydney with Sydney’s own eyes, and the words coming out of her own mouth, Lauren’s though they might have been, made them feel true, made them feel like her own thoughts. They were too close to her own thoughts for comfort. But there was a reason for Sydney to be having them. Lauren had nothing to gain from this, not unless it was knowing following Lauren’s advice would cause Sydney pain.

“Maybe I already have.”

  
Lauren laughed, and the sound had a bitter tinge. “Michael was right. We’re not as different as either of us would like to believe.”

“Not at the moment.”

“That’s right.” It was surreal to see the self-righteous sneer twisting her own mouth. It was ugly. “Hide behind sarcasm and pathetic one-liners.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have serious conversations with terrorists.”

“But you’ll sleep with them for information?” Lauren replied sweetly. “I’m not blaming you, Sydney. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past two years?”

Sydney slapped her. She didn't even remember moving close enough to do so.

Lauren laughed again, and spit blood. “Everything you do to me, Sydney,” she said, and her tone was mocking, “you’re only doing to yourself.” She ran her tongue almost suggestively along the split in her lip, licking the blood from the seam. She drawled, “Hit me again, Sydney.”

Sydney might have; she wanted to. The violence in her was frightening, the way it tingled beneath her skin. She wanted to hurt Lauren, for everything she’d done to Vaughn—for everything she’d done to her, to Sydney. For playing on her emotions. For making her care whether or not Lauren thought well of her. For making her feel guilty for still wanting Vaughn.

Sydney Bristow was used to betrayal. But only from people she loved. Not from people she barely knew. In most of her interactions—meeting men, stealing vault codes—she was the one who deceived.

“Why are you telling me this?” Sydney asked, pulling herself in with difficulty, flattening her voice of affect. Thinking of her father, of his unruffled, threatening calm.

“I’m angry with him,” Lauren said plainly. “He deserves to be hurt the way he hurt me. I believe you’re capable of it. And I want something from you.”

Sydney stared at her.

“A favor,” Lauren said. “I need you to give Michael a message for me.” She was trembling, just slightly: her fingers, her lips.

“What makes you think I would do that?”

“Because of what the message is.” Lauren swallowed visibly, and her voice dropped, became rough. “I want you to tell Michael how much I loathed him. How every morning I woke up next to him it was all I could do to keep from suffocating him with his own pillow. How—I want you to make it clear to him precisely how difficult it was to pretend to be in love with him. How utterly  _sickening_.”

 _Oh God._ “I couldn’t hurt him like that,” Sydney whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, remembering that she had, remembering  _how_  she had.

Lauren’s eyes widened, then began to gleam. The twist of her mouth was malicious. “You saw him.”

She knew it was damning, but Sydney couldn’t bring herself to answer. What did it matter if Lauren knew? It didn’t change what she did, or why.

“That’s far better,” Lauren laughed, “than anything I could have asked you to say to him.”

It was funny to her: Sydney’s pain, Vaughn’s.

“Do let me know what he says when he discovers it was you in my body, won’t you?”

Something in her snapped. “You had better hope,” Sydney hissed, “that my mother doesn’t let you go. Because I will  _kill_  you.”

“Why don’t you do it now?” Lauren taunted, her grin almost nightmarish as she threw Sydney’s own words back at her. “Isn’t that what you’re good at,  _Julia_?”

“Isn’t this a cozy scene,” Sark remarked as he closed the door behind him. Sydney realized dimly that she hadn’t heard him open it, that she had no idea how long he'd been there. Why hadn’t she heard him open it?

“Don’t worry, darling, we weren’t arguing over you,” Lauren sneered. “You’re all hers.”

“Generous of you,” he replied neutrally. “Sydney, I suggest you take a moment to regain some measure of control, as Irina will be here shortly.”

She hated that she felt ashamed. “I’m fine.”

He inclined his head. “Have it your way. If you’ll sit down in the chair, and place your hands in front of you.”

“If I’ll—what?”

Patiently, he explained, “We can’t have Lauren free once the switch has been made. We need to keep you both restrained until we are sure the desired effect has taken place. Then you’ll be released.”

She searched his eyes for some sort of emotion—some hint of assurance, or its lack—but they were entirely blank. Slowly, she moved to the chair, sat, and offered up to him her wrists.

“ _Idiots_ ,” Lauren muttered, but Sark merely knelt before her, looped the rope gently around her wrists and knotted it. She watched him as he bent his head and fastened her ankles to the legs of the chair with the same rope. He looked older from this angle, the curve of his cheek, the contour of his mouth. He finished with the last knot and looked up at her—and this time there _was_ something in his gaze. Her cheeks burned. She wished his face had just stayed blank.

He might have said something—she was sure he was going to—but it was at that moment that Irina returned, with a bottle of water and a small bag of dark dust.

“If you’re ready . . .”


	20. Part 4, Act 7

Sark stood behind Irina, in the most shadowed part of the room, both Sydney and Lauren clearly within his line of sight. The three women formed a triangle, with him a single, external point. Unrelated. Without relation. Normally, he preferred it that way.

He disagreed with Irina's choice to keep this between the four of them. True, it involved the artifact, and there were many in his employ he didn't yet trust, but he also did not underestimate either of the women with whom they were currently dealing, and would have felt far more at ease with a few heavily armed guards present. Irina, however, was calling the shots here—and it was crucial that he prevent the weight of her nearly preternatural suspicion from falling on him.

Both Sydney and Lauren had drunk from the glass Irina had provided—Sydney first, as Irina held the glass, then Lauren, from his hand—and then Irina had injected them both with a mild setative mixed with dust she'd brushed carefully off of the Rambaldi disk. Now they waited. Sydney's head had lolled on her neck, falling to the right. He walked over to Lauren's side—her head had tipped back into the top of the chair—and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.

"How long will they be out?"

Irina wrapped her arms around herself, and it should have made her appear vulnerable. On anyone else, it would have. She only looked tired, pensive. There were fine lines around her eyes that were unfamiliar to him. She never looked old, but tonight . . . tonight she looked worn.

"Not long." Her smile was as much a mystery as ever. "Which one are you waiting for to wake up?"

"Irina, will this work?" he asked, disregarding her question. She hadn't expected him to answer, or she wouldn't have asked.

"It should."

She tucked her hair behind her ears in a manner reminiscent of Sydney, and Sark wondered who Irina might have been, what she might have been like, had she defected, had she chosen to remain with Sydney, with Jack. But that didn't bear thinking of for long, because of what it would have meant for him, both for good and for ill. He didn't have the luxury of might-have-beens, not for himself. Nor did he want them. He did wonder, however, why Irina had left—her cover had been intact, as far as he had been able to discern. Orders? She never spoke of that time, the months surrounding her extraction. As often as she spoke of her family—Sydney, and Katya and Yelena—her interactions with them during that time remained unspoken. It was a blank space in his understanding of her, and something about the very profoundness of the gap made him believe that he was therefore missing something crucially important.

But then, Irina was a woman of many secrets, and he did not profess to know even half of them. He wondered who she trusted, if anyone. At least he could see by her expressions, its softness as she gazed upon her sleeping daughter, who she loved.

"I do wish you would tell me what the disk is for," Sark murmured, stroking Lauren's cheek once more—she'd forgive him, eventually, but his bed would be the colder for it until then (he didn't deceive himself that he'd see Sydney there again—before turning to his former mentor.

The only discernable change in her was the slight steeling of her spine, a tension he had from necessity learned long ago to detect. "I've asked you not to press me, Julian."

"And I assure you, I have kept your request firmly in mind. I mention it again only because the disk's inteded use would be a helpful piece of information at this juncture, considering the circumstances. You've no call to reprimand me, Irina." He let amusement settle lightly across his features. "May I remind you of our current professional relationship?"

"You're in a mood this afternoon," she observed, lips curving in a way that could be called affectionate or dangerous. Her change of subject, and her tone, did not fool him; he remained wary, on-guard.

She didn't disappoint; her head cocked to the side, and she asked, "Did you really manage to secure your inheritance?"

A dangerous question.

"Nearly," he responded smoothly. "There is one vital piece of information I will need to obtain after our work here is concluded." His response was carefully constructed to explain his current temper while giving away as little information as possible. It was also the truth. "You're welcome to use this building for awhile, if you have need of it."

"And wait for Jack to return with the CIA?" True amusement colored her words—a sense of irony, with a tad of yearning.

"You are intending to release him, then?"

"Of course." She turned her gaze to her daughter. "I promised Sydney."

"And Lauren?" he pressed.

She looked over her shoulder at him. "You care about her."

Weighing the possible ramifications of his response, he said carefully, "I do."

To his surprise, Irina smiled—genuinely. "That's good. I wonderd, after Allison . . . I know how close you two were. How much you loved her."

 _You don't, actually,_  he thought, and let the words lie there, unspoken, in his mouth like the first taste of wine. Intoxicating in its power. Ripe with potential.

"I thought about you, when I heard."

He hummed, just slightly. "Do you mean recently? Or the first time, when I was rotting away in the CIA holding cell you had arranged?  _Your_  CIA holding cell, I was told."

"The first time. And congratulations, Mr. Sark, on warranting the infamous glass cell." Her mouth quirked, her eyes crinkled, and for perhaps the first time, he believed he might  _hated_  her. Which would only make this easier. He nursed the feeling.

"How did they tell you? Or did they tell you?"

He loked away, towards the darkest corner of the room. Two years, and the pain could still take him unawares. The uniformity, the evenness, of the dark calmed him enough to answer. "They used the information as part of an interrogation technique." His voice was steady. "They were attempting to extract from me Sydney's whereabouts, but of course I did not know them. The news wasn't welcome. Mr. Vaughn was particularly harsh." He allowed himself a smile, tight and grim. He did not allow himself to relive the memory of the man's treatment, though his sinuses ached, the scars on the insides of his arms and legs twinged, simply at the mention of his name. "I must say, it was particularly gratifying, fucking his wife."

Irina's soft laugher was musical, and knowing. Her sympathy was an instrument she played with consumate skill, and he'd told her more than he'd meant to—but that was better. Let her believe he was dancing to her tune, that he wished only revenge. He wasn't after revenge, not anymore; nothing so heated as that. He was after  _justice_. Reparation for the position in which he'd been put.

But he had little time to dwell on it—because Sydney was stirring.

He could almost feel the tension in Irina's lithe, reedy body: go to her or not? How would she react? And more importantly, who, precisely, was she?

Sydney's eyes fluttered open, and the look in them, the sheer agony, was something Lauren could never replicate. "Mom?"

Irina sank to her knees in front of her daughter. He hoped, when he had been in much the same position earlier, that he had not appeared so subservient, so much at Sydney's mercy, but he must have. The idea set uncomfortably on his shoulders, and he resisted the urge to physically shrug it off.

"You're all right," Irina was murmuring. "It's all right now."

Sydney's head was bowed, her lips barely parted and her throat working. She looked vulnerable, and stunning, the sheet of her hair shadowing her face and parting over the smooth spheres of her sleekly muscled shoulders.

It was then that Lauren moaned. He moved to her side immediately, grateful for the excuse to tear his eyes from her body's previous occupant. He pulled her hair back with one hand, stroked his thumb along her jaw. "Lauren, love," he said urgently, when her eyes did not open and her brow creased in pain.

"I'm fine," she said steadily, as if she were concentrating on the feeling. "Don't touch me."

Irina was loosening the knots at Sydney's wrist and ankles. She looked . . . anxious, Sark realized. It was an expression he had never associated with Irina before; to him she had always appeared unceasingly serene. Sydney looked ill.

Sydney turned her head, and their eyes met. She blanched; her cheeks went sickly pale, and her eyes were nearly wrenching in the depths of their pain.

 _Curious_ , he thought, almost unbearably drawn to her, as Irina pulled the last piece of rope from her wrists—and as Sydney ran for the door. Irina followed. He heard sounds of retching outside the door—presumably Sydney—and winced. He'd have to have someone clean that up. Hesitantly, he glanced over at Lauren, whose eyes were open now. She was breathing steadily, if somewhat shallowly.

Her mouth twisted at the question in his eyes, in it's familiar and oddly endearing way. "I haven't done anything in the last few days to make myself ill."

He nodded in acknowledgement—of what she knew, and her response to it. "Is there anything I can do to make you less uncomfortable?"

"You could let me go."

"You know I can't."

"Won't."

"Not until Sydney has returned safely to the CIA. You would jeopardize Irina's objective."

Lauren's eyebrows raised in disdain. "But doesn't she have what she wants already? She has the disk now."

"Consider it a precaution for all of our safeties," he suggested. "How do I know you wouldn't go straight back to the Covenant with news of my deceit?"

It was  _his_  objective she would compromise—her loyalties were naively fixed, and utterly predictable—but she needn't know that. Better, in fact, that she did not. She knew too much already.

He'd hoped, initially, to be able to use her to further his aims; he had engineered their first encounter with that very thing in mind, with her willingness to work with him against her employer as a test. He hadn't anticipated the rush of desire her scent had given him, or the headly pleasure of carressing the wife of the man he had, during his time in custody, learned to, if not hate, at least dearly wish revenge upon. Her craftiness, her very betrayal of him to Cole, had paradoxically only endeared her to him further. Here was a woman who could match him at last, he had thought, but his confidence in its accuracy had already begun to fade. Even Sydney Bristow—and something dark and dormant in him stirred at the very thought of her name—had proved to be a more worthy ally: challenging, gratifying, consumately professional. It had been there in the brief look they had shared only moment before . . . but its bedmates had been revulsion, and fear.

He needn't worry about working with her again; the likelihood of that was nil. She would return to her beloved CIA. He would take his money and retire somewhere—take freelance work on the side, perhaps. He'd grown tired of working for an organization; he'd grown tired of pretending to feel allegiance towards things which he did not. He'd been loyal to Irina, and that had gotten him little but an extended stay in US custody—because she had a greater allegiance, one to her daughter. He couldn't blame her, precisely, but he also refused to put himself in the same position twice. He worked only for himself, now.

And yet, he'd been true to Lauren—in his fashion. And he would, because he cared for her, ensure she was released.

No matter how trying she was being at the moment. "And why  _shouldn't_  I go straight to the Covenant?" she asked, mouth pursed.

"Lauren, darling," he said patiently, "I would expect nothing less of you."

Her eyes narrowed in a way he'd always found fetching, but was, at the moment and considering the circumstances, merely tiresome.

Brusquely, because she could respond in the scathing manner to which they'd both become accustomed, he informed her, "I'll send someone to remove you to a more comfortable location for the time being." Then, more gently, "I promised you that you would leave this place alive."

Scorn. "And you are if nothing else a man of your word."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I am a man of many words, many of them remarkably true. This is one of those."

Lauren cocked her head to the side, studying him. He wondered what she saw. Something she understood, he presumed, because her expression quieted, softened—grew nearly nostalgic. "If so—thank you, Julian."

He bowed his head, and regretted once again, and rather painfully, the circumstances in which they found themselves. He could have loved her, he realized. For all her faults, he could have come to want her as he wanted for breath, given a little time. But that was impossible now. He'd been deceiving himself before; his betrayal was something she could never forgive. Not his intimacies with Sydney, but his willingness to put her into a situation she may not have been able to get out of, without her knowledge, without her consent. He had imprisoned her, and she was a woman, he now saw more clearly than he wished, who could not abide imprisonment—not after her marriage to Michael Vaughn. Some part of him had known that, but had not cared enough to sacrifice his inheritance, his sense of justice, and with them his dignity. That he would not abandon for any woman.

"Where will you go?" Laren asked as he reached the door.

"To bed, presumably."

"No—after that. After this."

 _Would you want to follow me?_  he thought whimsically, with a sad smile.

"Somewhere no one will ever be able to find me," he said without turning.

"Good luck," she said, and, brow furrowing, he returned, "Good luck to you as well."


	21. Part 5, Act 1

Sydney fumbled blindly for the phone ringing on the bedside table, her eyes swollen from crying herself to sleep. It was Lauren’s NSA cell phone, she remembered, and felt the bile rise once again in the back of her throat—but the realization came too late: she had already found the answer key, and managed a hoarse hello.

She wished to God she hadn’t.

“Sydney.” Sloane’s voice was smooth, serpentine, in her ear. It was the voice that whispered still through her fevered, panicked dreams, taunting her with her failures, with the fallibility of her judgment. With the sheer idiocy of her trust. She’d put up a good show in his office, but it never failed to make her skin crawl.

“Your mission, I take it, was a success.”

“What do you want now?”

She forced herself to affect a bored tone; disinterest was hardly the most difficult alias she’d ever had to take on, and yet it was, as always, a struggle to keep her hate tamped down.

“I want what I have always wanted,” he said, and several sarcastic responses leapt to mind as to what, precisely, that was, but she didn’t have the chance to voice them before he continued, “I want the disk. You’re with your mother; I presume she has it.”

Her mother. Her mother, who had held her hair back as she vomited, and held her while she cried. Might have cried with her, though Sydney had felt only numb in her arms. Her own sobs had been wracked with grief, with self-disgust; they had overwhelmed her, sapped her of her ability to maintain control, to maintain her composure. But at least she hadn’t broken down in front of Lauren. She didn’t think she could have survived that.

“The disk,” Sloane repeated. “You’ll get it for me.”

“And why exactly,” Sydney demanded, “would I do that?”

“Because I have Michael Vaughn. And if you fail to bring me the disk, I will kill him.”

She was wide and painfully awake now, and the fury and the panic coursing through her was almost too much for her to bear.

“You  _bastard_.”

“I had hoped, Sydney, that we would not have to do this the hard way. But you didn’t listen.” She could almost feel his faint, oily faux-paternal smile over the telephone line. “You never listen. It’s one of the things I admire most about you.”

He meant it, was the sick thing. No, the sick thing was that meaning it would not stop him from destroying her, if he had to. It wasn’t stopping him from using her now. From using Vaughn.

Sydney closed her eyes. And she had been the one to leave Vaughn there, at Sloane’s mercy.

She couldn’t take this, not . . . She couldn’t. She was going to break in two. She’d been so stupid. In everything she’d done as Lauren, she’d been blind, and stupid, so driven by her need to _know_ , and her need for revenge, that she hadn’t _thought._ She wished more than anything to take back the last seventy-two hours. To be able to start over. But she knew better than anyone that was impossible; she’d erased two years of her life to return herself to a state of grace, of blissful innocence—to do just that, start over fresh—and her life had been nothing but a nightmare ever since.

She had to focus. She had to get Vaughn back. Because she loved him, the feeling as always like a cancer inside of her she couldn’t stop and couldn’t cut out, and Sloane would kill him. The way he’d killed Danny.  _“No, Agent Bristow, you killed him,”_ he reminded her endlessly in her worst nightmares—and it may have been her choice that led to Danny’s death, but Sloane had been the one that put her in a situation in which she’d had to make that choice. Sloane had set the rules, and forced her to play his game. And now he had done it again. It was a game she couldn’t opt out of; the price was too high.  _“If you’d only listened to me, Sydney,”_ she imagined him saying, standing over Vaughn’s still, cold body, shaking his head sadly.

She realized in horror that her hand was shaking.

“We’ll make the exchange at dawn, in front of the market in the main square. It should be busy, that time of day. Agent Vaughn and I will be expecting you.” A pause, another sickening, condescending smile she could hear but not see. “Good luck, Sydney.”

*

It wasn’t hard to find his rooms. Some part of her had known that this was where she would end up the moment she’d pulled the phone from ear, jabbing viciously at the disconnect button though Sloane had already broken the connection—an attempt at control, at authority, where she had none—but she was still surprised to find herself here, picking the lock, pushing open the door, making her way instinctively to the bedroom, where she now stood in the doorway, staring helplessly at the light that fell across his relaxed features and the cool expanse of chest above the blanket. He lay on his back, head resting to the left, hair tufting out at ludicrous angles.

Not so tough without the grooming, she decided. He looked ridiculously young like this, his expression unguarded, mouth soft.

 _Very soft,_ she remembered, and shivered, and wondered again exactly what it was she had hoped to accomplish here.

He turned his head, and his face was illuminated. His brow was deeply, deeply furrowed; it struck her that his life was a kind of nightmare too. As she watched, his lips pulled back into a grimace—and then stilled. It was as if he knew she was standing there—which nearly made her shiver once again.

 _Better that he’s asleep,_ she thought.  _I can just—_

His eyes opened. His expression remained calm, but his hand, she saw, was already closed over the hand of the gun beneath his pillow.

“I’m . . . unarmed,” she said, and he released his grip, slowly, deliberately, on the weapon. The control of his facial features followed; he blinked a few times, sat up. The covers pooled around his hips.

“Is everything all right?”

“I ran out of towels,” she quipped, reaching for an explanation for her presence; her voice trembled, broke, against her will. Her shoulders hunched. This was a mistake. Oh God, what was she doing here?  _For Vaughn,_ she told herself, and it was enough to get her to straighten.

Slowly, as if afraid she’d bolt, he pulled back the blankets, swung his legs off the side of the bed, and moved towards where she stood, gaze never leaving hers.

Earlier she had looked into his eyes with her own instead of Lauren’s for the first time since they started this whole mess, and seen the reflection of all her recent misdeeds. She had seen judgment. She had seen the worst of herself, of what she was capable of: the anger, the hate, the calculation. Now she saw only compassion, only softness and acceptance, and . . . gratitude? . . . and she wanted to damn him for it, but she couldn’t. Not when he was looking at her like that. Not when he hesitantly lifted his hand to smooth a wayward lock of hair behind her ear and breathed her name with such reverence.

“Sydney,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“I needed someone,” she said, and her eyes filled, finally, with hot tears.

“Then by all means, please,” he said. “Allow me.”

The palm of his hand curved around her cheek. She knew when his thumb encountered her tears; his skin slid against hers. She wished she had it in her to feel ashamed.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured, and touched his mouth to hers.

She clung to him as he opened up the kiss, deepening it. She hung on.

This wasn’t what she’d come here expecting. She thought it, distantly, as his lips slid down her neck, as she tilted her head to let them, as the palms of her hands molded over the muscle of his shoulders: corded, rippling as he bent to suck on her collarbone, as he let out a sound like a groan that only stirred her to her own.

“Beautiful,” he mumbled against her breast, through the black lycra she’d pulled on to replace Lauren’s choice of leather vest, and as she arched she wondered if he was maybe mistaking her for someone else, because this wasn’t the Sark she knew, wasn’t the Sark she’d been in bed with the night before (though in defense, the other night she had hardly been  _her_ self, either). Maybe waking him in the middle of the night always had this effect: made him slow, and gentle, and oddly needy.

When his teeth fixed over her nipple, through the fabric, she didn’t care.

She’d felt dirty before: soiled, irreparably unclean. But something about this was putting all her pieces back together, however temporarily, washing the last two days’ regrets from her mind. It erased their previous encounter in a way she didn’t understand—and didn’t think she wanted to. She helped him pull her shirt over her head, felt his sigh shiver through her body. She just wanted to feel it. She just wanted to feel clean.

Kissing her again, he guided her back to the bed, one arm banded across her lower back, holding her now-bare torso to him. He was solid, warm, strong against her; he made her feel . . . not small, never small, but absurdly fragile, bendable, on the very edge of breaking. She wanted to speak, she tried to, but she’d barely gotten out his name before he tenderly covered her mouth with one hand and lowered her to the mattress. Crouching over her, he licked her rib cage, traced the fragile bones there, spanned her with his long fingers.

“It would have been a shame,” he murmured, running his fingertips across her belly, “for me to have ever broken a single lovely bone in your body.”

She gasped as he pressed a kiss above her navel, then managed, “You fractured my wrist once.”

“This wrist?” He delicately encircled her left one and brought it to the thickening bulge at the front of his cotton pants.

She let her hand close around it, fluttering her fingers along the side. He sighed, and pushed against her palm in a gratifying way. He really did want  _her,_ and it surprised her, though she knew it shouldn’t—not with his attitude these last few days, not with the time he must have spent (the times they’d faced each other in the field) crafting innuendo to use against her. His professional persona was cool, even, politeness on the edge of menace. But his eyes had always sparked with something extra where she was concerned. He’d always been plain about his enjoyment of her as an adversary; it shouldn’t have been this unsettling for him to be so open about his enjoyment of her in his bed.

“No, the other one,” she told him, and was rewarded with his low chuckle. She found herself almost feeling like smiling. Then her breath caught as he pressed the pad of his thumb against her, through the thin layer of her pants; he took her lower lip into his mouth and she got a little bit lost.

One of his thighs pressed between hers, and he began to move it, slightly, a rocking motion against her center. She moaned, low, an expression of approval, and his answering laugh was warming rather than offensive.

“Sydney, sweet,” he said, and she lifted her face to kiss him, lifted her hands to hold his mouth to her own. His hair was a luxury where it rubbed between her fingers: soft, just beginning to rethicken. She tilted her hips up, trying to increase the pressure.

“More?” he asked against her mouth, and she thrust against him in response.

“You’ll have to remove your trousers.” His breath danced across the sensitized, swollen flesh of her lips. She nodded, and helped him ease them from her hips, down her thighs. His fingers tangled with hers as they tugged the fabric down, and their eyes met again. He smiled at her, faintly, in such a genuine way that her chest felt tight.

“Thank you,” he said, “for allowing me the opportunity to do this the way you deserve.”

He brushed his lips over the clutch of curls between her legs, and inhaled. His eyes closed, as if he was breathing her in, and as she watched, choked with need, he slowly lowered his mouth and slid his tongue over her already slickened flesh.

She arched, and gave herself over to him. She hadn’t intended to—she’d never intended any of this—but it had been so long since she’d been touched with any kind of real tenderness. He brought her slowly, leisurely, to places she had thought she’d forgotten, until she was grasping at his shoulders, pulling him up, needing every bit of his skin she could get in contact with her own. He shed his clothing on the way up, reached her mouth just as she heard his pants hit the carpet, and kissed her.

“Wait,” she demanded hoarsely, pushing him onto his back, “I need—”

He didn’t question her, just laid back, let her have her way. Her hands spanned his chest, stroked the firm plane of his stomach, slid over his hipbones, parted his thighs. He was beautiful; she’d never really let herself see that before. She’d never seen so much of him, before—in any sense.

He let her touch him, his own hands resting supportively on top of her thighs, and when she cupped him again, skin to warm skin, his fingers tightened on her.

 _Bruises,_ she thought.  _There are going to be bruises._

And before she could think, before she could remind herself why this was a bad idea, she leaned her body forward and slid him into her in one smooth, long stroke.

The sound he made was something between her name and a plea to God. She began to move, head already feeling light, hands braced on his chest, hair falling around her face. Her belly pressed against the soft, light fur of his, hipbones rubbing, the sweat they’d worked up easing the motion. It was unbelievably erotic, the way they were lined up against each other, the sensation of his skin on hers.

He was watching her, she realized, and once she met his eyes she couldn’t look away. He reached out one hand and cupped her face; then, infinitely gently, he trailed his fingers down her throat, along her chest, delicately across one nipple, and the other. She shuddered, and shuddered, her hips pistoning faster and harder, and then his hands were there, helping her, guiding her hips, a regular, feather-light brush with both thumbs on the sensitive insides of her thighs, and she peaked, a gasp of pleasure just sufficient to send her writhing above him but not completely satisfy her, and with one quick movement he rolled them, bringing her, still pulsing around him, beneath him, and began a slow, even thrust inside her. She wrapped her legs around him and held on.

There was a freedom here she hadn’t known in Lauren’s body—hadn’t known in her own, lately—and it spread through her like an aphrodisiac. Sark groaned, hands curling around her hips, nuzzling into her neck, and she threw her head back and let her eyes close. He was pushing her further towards a second climax with every rise of her hips, and she felt the pleasure of it suffusing her, spreading to her fingertips and stretching into her toes.

She felt his mouth brush against her ear, his breath hot. “Come,” he suggested in a low tone. “Now.”

She came.

A few thrusts later he came as well; his slim body tensed above her, and he gave a long, satisfied sigh. He lowered his mouth to hers, and she should have been alert for some sort of double cross, but she couldn’t bring herself to be, not yet. He kissed her, and kissed her again, as she lay bonelessly underneath him, warmed through, aching emotionally, feeling on the razor edge of some kind of fulfillment. His mouth was as yielding as hers, his breath as deep and slow.

“You’re amazing,” he murmured, and she summoned up a smile for him: small, but sincere.

Stretching out beside her, he ran one hand over the planes of her naked body. Then, pressing one last kiss on her shoulder, he slid an arm across her stomach and descended back into the sleep she’d woken him from.

She waited, hardly daring to take in breath.

When his breathing evened, she slipped out of bed and back into her clothes, took the gun from beneath the pillow and his access card from his jacket pocket, and, after checking the weapon’s clip to ensure it was full, went to find her mother.


	22. Part 5, Act 2

The halls were silent and empty, almost cold, as Sydney made her way slowly, cautiously, through them.

The ID card Sydney had been issued (her mother had brought it to her, with a bowl of chicken soup that Sydney hadn’t been able to stomach) had let her into the hall where Sark slept—had that been his doing, or Irina’s?—but there were limits to how free she was to wander the compound. Or at least there had been.

With Sark’s all-access pass, she’d been able to move at will throughout the building. She’d made a sweep—she didn’t want to be interrupted—but everything seemed quiet. Particularly the hall she now moved through, barely a shadow.

The door to Irina’s study was coming up quickly, but she still had time to back out. There had to be another way.

 _There’s not,_  she reminded herself grimly. She’d laid there, cold straight through, analyzing the situation from every angle. Sloane could kill Vaughn; she knew that like she knew the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. And she could get the disk—as long as she managed to take Irina by surprise.

She thought of Sark, lying asleep in his bed, naked, expecting her to be there when he awoke.

She took a deep breath and, readying Sark’s gun, kicked in the door.

Irina looked up; she was seated at the desk, spread with papers, hair pulled back and slender glasses frames perched on her nose. There was nothing on the desktop more deadly than a pencil.

Sydney aimed the gun at her mother’s chest. “Hands where I can see them,” she hissed.

Irina looked startled—nothing more. “Sydney?”

“Hands,” Sydney insisted.

“What’s wrong?”

“Stand up—slowly.”

Irina obeyed, hands lax, but visible, at her sides. “Whatever it is, Sydney, I can help you.”

But she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. They were on opposite sides again—they always had been, she’d only let herself forget it for a time—and Sydney was surprised to discover how much it hurt. Still. Again.

“Everything I have is yours,” Irina said soothingly, taking a step towards where Sydney stood, palms open and arms held out in front of her body. Sydney should have pulled the trigger—a warning shot, just off Irina’s right shoulder—but she couldn’t move, locked in her mother’s gaze. She was remembering being five years old, making cookies—her mother had called her something different, something, Sydney later realized, in Russian. She was remembering falling asleep in her father’s arms at the end of a day trip to the mountains, her mother’s warm, honeyed voice in her ears. She was remembering being sung to, and tucked in. Tears stung her eyes. And she was just quick enough to block Irina’s second blow; the first sent her gun skittering across the hard floor.

They fought. Irina delivered a punch to Sydney’s gut that sent Sydney stumbling back, breath temporarily knocked from her lungs. She came back with a kick that Irina managed to barely block, but which put her off balance enough for Sydney to grab her arm, wrench it back and force her mother to the ground.

“Sydney, I don’t want to hurt you,” Irina pleaded, voice breaking, which was strange considering the fact Irina was the one on her knees.

Sydney’s chest heaved painfully, but she didn’t sacrifice her grip. Irina’s skin was already reddening around Sydney’s fingers, and tears were falling freely down her face.

“Just tell me what you want from me.”

She yanked Irina’s arm back further, eliciting a gasp of pain. “What I want,” Sydney said, “is answers.” The next part she could barely say without choking on a sob. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a sister?”

Sydney felt her mother’s shock like a jolt of electricity. Her body was preternaturally still. And then:

“Sloane,” Irina whispered.

“Yes, Sloane,” Sydney hissed. “I had to hear about my sister . . . about you and . . . from him.”

“You can’t trust him,” Irina said.

No one knew that better than Sydney did. “You think I wanted to believe him?”

Irina turned her head, and Sydney saw her mother eyes. They were hard, narrowed. “I think that, when it comes to Sloane, you’re too close.”

Sydney stumbled back, stunned, and Irina ‘s foot shot out, tripped her, sent her sprawling on her back on the ground.

“You do have a sister,” Irina told her as Sydney climbed to her feet and lowered into a defensive crouch. “Arvin is her father. That much is true. But you have to listen to me, Sydney. Sloane cannot be allowed to find her.”

“Where’s the disk?” Sydney demanded as they circled each other, both wary, neither eager to make the first move.

“So that’s it.” Her mother’s laugher was full and rich as she took a testing step forward. “Oh Sydney, Sydney.” She aimed an elbow at Sydney’s windpipe; Sydney blocked. “What does Sloane have on you that you’d be so willing to work with him?”

She hated how her mother’s words, her tone, made her feel; it was worse the blows they exchanged, the bruising she could already feel bursting beneath her skin. She felt like a child: shortsighted, irresponsible,  _foolish_.

Grimly, she responded, “He has Vaughn.” Then she struck.

Irina was getting older, and Sydney was in peak physical condition; the gunshot wound in her shoulder barely twinged. Or perhaps Sydney simply had more to lose. Within moments Irina was incapacitated, cheek pressed against the floor, and Syudne was pulling the length of rope from the waistband of her pants.

“You’d trade your sister’s life for his?”

“I’m not trading her life for anything.” Sydney secured the knot, then reinforced it with the handcuffs she’d borrowed from one of the guards who’d had the misfortune of coming across her in her initial sweep. She stood. “I’m trading a disk  _I_  stole to save a man’s _life_.”

“He betrayed you.” The pity in her mother’s eyes was sharp as knives, and there were places, apparently, though she would not have believed it until that moment, where Sydney was still tender enough to bleed. “You were gone six months and he was already seeing someone new.”

“I was  _dead_ ,” she justified for what felt like the thousandth time. The words had turned weary with repetition. Raising her voice, she said, “He explained it to me.”

“It isn’t something you can explain away.” Irina’s gaze was penetrating, shrewd, filled with misused, misplaced sympathy. “It’s something you feel.”

Sydney steeled herself. “It doesn’t matter what he did to me. I can’t let him die.”

“We can find another way,” Irina said.

“I can’t risk it.” Sydney felt hysteria rising in her once more, nearly blinding her with its panic. “I won’t.”

“You’re putting her life in danger.”

“Her life is in danger no matter what I do. He’ll find her eventually, even without my help. He told me—it’s why he created Omnifam. To find her. To get access to genetic databases.”

“Then why does he need the disk so badly?  _Think_ , Sydney.”

She had thought. “It’s the only way.” The lines of her face were cold and hard.

“Sydney—” Irina’s voice was reedy with anguish, with desperation, but it was a desperation Sydney knew better than to trust. Particularly with Irina. Even bound and handcuffed, she was far from helpless. “Finding your sister . . . That’s not what the disk does.”

“But Sloane said . . .”

Of course he had lied. When had he ever told her the truth about anything? Their whole association had been a lie. She was so stupid. Over and over again.

Quietly, her mother said, “Did you really believe after what it did to you that the disk’s purpose could be something so simple? So . . . harmless?”

No. No of course not. And she’d been a fool to think it. She asked, “What does it do?”

Irina looked up at her. “If you’re going to do this . . . It’s better for you if you don’t know.”

“Tell me what it does. If I . . .” She swallowed, hardened herself. “I need to know what I’m handing over in exchange for Vaughn’s life.”

Irina’s voice was distant, and though her face was turned towards Sydney, she was looking beyond her, seeing somewhere else. “The powder from the disk is the final ingredient in a serum that, when injected into her veins, will allow her—your sister, Nadia—to channel Milo Rambaldi.”

 _Nadia_ , Sydney thought, heart in her throat.  _My sister’s name is Nadia._

And then the rest of her mother’s words sung in. Rambaldi. Again.  _Of course._

Irina continued. “That’s why the powder was able to affect you—your genetic makeup is close enough to your sister’s that a similar transference must have taken place.”

“Except instead of Rambaldi, I got Lauren Reed.” Sydney frankly wasn’t sure which one was worse.

“The rest of the serum’s components are designed to intensify the effect, and allow Nadia to transmit a message. Sloane can’t be allowed to obtain to the disk, Sydney. Channeling Rambaldi . . . It could kill her.”

And Sloane would have Rambaldi’s message. And with Rambaldi, it was rarely something good. In Sloane’s hands, it could be catastrophic.

“Sloane has all the other ingredients?”

“I believe he does.”

“Then you’ll have to make sure he doesn’t find her.” Sydney retrieved Sark’s gun from the corner of the room, between the wall and the dresser, and returned to her initial position. “Where’s the disk?”

“I wish you could trust me, Sydney.”

“And I wish you could trust me. Tell me where it is,” Sydney said. Slowly, steadily, she leveled the gun at her mother’s breast.

Irina wasn’t fooled. “You won’t kill me.”

Sydney lowered the gun. “Mom,” she said, gambling on the regret she had always thought she’d seen in her mother’s eyes not having been just wishful thinking on her part, “I can’t lose someone else I love.”

Irina’s expression melted. “Sydney—”

“Mom, please. We’ll keep her safe from him.” Her voice broke on the next part, and it was only partly artifice. “I’ll keep her safe.”

There were tears in Irina’s eyes when she finally spoke. “You always wanted a sister.”

Relief rushed through Sydney’s veins. She hadn’t realized how close she had been to panicking. She was all too aware of how close she had been to losing Vaughn. Again. For good. She closed her eyes. 

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“The disk is in a lockbox in the storage facility on three. The key is in the vault behind the tapestry. The combination is 04-13-80.” Her gaze flickered. “Nadia’s birthday.”

Sydney worked quickly. The key was in her hand—it felt hot, like a live thing; it burned its impression into her palm—almost before Irina finished speaking, and she was headed or the door. Nearly there, she turned back.

“If I could untie you—”

“Go,” Irina said, then as Sydney turned around, “Sydney, if I don’t . . . when you find your sister, tell her . . . tell her that everything I have ever done, I did to keep her safe. To keep both of you safe.”

Sydney smiled, dimpling, the best she could through the fresh tears. “I’ll . . . I’ll tell her. If you don’t see her first.”

Irina’s smile was sad; Sydney thought there was something else there, some knowledge of the future to which Sydney was not privy, but she didn’t have the time. It was already later than she’d planned, between the time it had taken to . . . borrow Sark’s card key, and this.

“Go on,” Irina said again, and Sydney went, leaving her there cuffed to the leg of the heavy oak desk.

The storage facility was easy to find, and Sark’s badge let her right in. The room was tall and long and barely, eerily lit, the walls covered, floor to ceiling, in metal boxes like so many silver bricks, each marked with a number and adorned with a single keyhole.

 _How many are filled?_  she wondered.  _And with what?_  Were they all Sark’s secrets, her mother’s, others’, all locked up in these little metal boxes the way her memories were locked up in her mind? She lay her hand on the wall, traced her fingers along the grooves. She felt nothing but cool metal. Nothing of what was concealed inside.

Her mother hadn’t given her a number. She tried 47; nothing. 4, 13, 80. But of course Irina was smarter than to reuse those. Sydney tried all the permutations of her own birthday. Then Sloane’s. She didn’t have time to try them all. She’d have to go back; precious minutes wasted. Her urgency, temporarily assuaged by the stillness of the room, came back to her in a rush. Then—

It was Jack’s that fit the key. She pulled the façade open and pulled out the narrow plastic case inside. The disk was there. Tucking the case into the back of her belt; she pushed everything back into place and sprinted the few steps back to the door. She flung it open and ran, physically, into Sark.

Her father was standing behind him, looking grim.

“Excellent,” Sark said. “You already have it.”


	23. Part 5, Act 3

He awoke alone, and irritated. Irritated because he was alone, and alone because the woman who had shared his bed had left him like a thief in the night. Literally like a thief in the night, he discovered soon after, but at the moment of waking he had been merely annoyed at her absence.

Most likely she was feeling ashamed, he had mused, and though it was a bit of an affront to his ego, it was at least something which he understood of her. Agent Sydney Bristow was about loyalty, and honesty—but only after a point. Until she reached that point—that breaking point at which one proved oneself divine or demonic, human or monster, and at which her humanity, her innate decency, always shone through and his failed to pass measure—she was a master of denial. Sleeping with him in her own body, he suspected, with no way to distance herself from the act or her memory of it, had shocked her back into her characteristic repression.

The CIA taught its agents to compartmentalize all too well, in his opinion. There was much to be said for a clear mind, free of partitions. It had taken him years to cultivate a passive indifference towards life and its inhabitants, and along the way, he allowed, there was much of what was good and lovable and real in him that had been sacrificed, but in the end his was a more reliable technique: there was no chance of the constructed barriers between personal and professional, emotional and intellectual, breaking down at inopportune moments, because there were none. Simply himself, and all he entailed.

So when he discovered the gun missing, and then his ID card gone from the pocket in which he had left it, he simply nodded slowly, thoughtfully, taking in the alteration in his situation.

His suspicions the evening before had been correct: Sloane must have contacted her. He felt a twinge of pity for her, of regret at the situation—the same emotions that had driven him to such tenderness that night, holding her in his arms. He thought if he had it to do over again, he might tell her what he knew the moment he saw her in the doorway of his bedroom, a lean shadow, all in black, hair loose and dark chestnut in the regrettable lack of light. But then he wouldn’t have the memory of having her— _all_  of her—in his bed, in his arms . . . of the way she shuddered at his demanded, “Come. Now,” and gave herself to him. (It was, he believed, the only time Sydney Bristow had ever taken an order from him, and it would not surprise him if it were also the last.) He revised his thought. He should have told her afterward, immediately afterward—taken advantage of her weakened, sated state—but he had been too sated, too languid, too oddly content himself.  _A few moments,_  he’d thought as he drifted off, Sydney’s warm, heavy-limbed body a soporific against his own. He’d allowed it to lull him more thoroughly than he would have in any other bed, with nearly any other woman, and instead of ten minutes later he woke three-quarters of an hour after, disgruntled by the loss of her heat almost even before he surfaced from sleep.

It was too late now, however, to revise their past. He could only look to their future. Which looked far bleaker now that he had discovered the missing gun than it had mere moments before.

She would have gone to Irina, he decided, and shook his head. Nothing for it now. If only she’d thought to ask him.

He pulled on slim boxers, trousers, an equally slim dark shirt, liberated a second gun from the case beneath the bed, and followed after her.

Outside Irina’s study he paused and pressed one ear to just the right point on the heavy door.

“Thank you,” he heard Sydney say, voice muffled through the wood, and found himself mildly impressed despite himself.

He slipped into the shadows barely in time to evade her notice as she exited the room, pulling the door closed tightly behind her. He waited until she had passed into another hall before easing the door open and slipping inside.

Irina’s head whipped up, a panicked look in her expressive eyes, her hair in utter disarray. She’d been working her wrists from their steel prison, he realized, and somewhat frantically, at that. It was delicious, really: for once, he had some power here, some control. It was exhilarating.

“Julian, thank God,” she said. “Get me out of these.”

“Mother-daughter tiff?” he asked in mock-sympathy, then hardened at her withering glare. “No, I don’t believe I will.”

“What?” The shock on her face was entirely genuine. She had misjudged him. It gave him a surge of sheer power he knew he must be cautious with, lest it cost him what he hoped to achieve with it.

“Not this time, Irina,” he said, crouching down to her level. Then, neatly, he reached out, gripped her hair with ruthless efficiency, and slammed her head against the desk he’d given her.

 _So much for that bridge_ , he mused as he stood, glad to have it done with if slightly uneasy, still, about the potential consequences down the road. Irina was a dangerous enemy to have.

A trickle of blood graced her forehead, but she was still. It would give him the time he needed; it would give Sydney the time she needed to rescue her precious boy scout.

The thought irritated him more than it should have.

As he turned to leave, a glint of light caught his eye. What was this? He leaned down to pick it up: a disc—flat, silver, with a bright finish. A perfect inch and a quarter in diameter, it caught the light from Irina’s desk lamp and reflected it dispassionately, neither amplifying it nor dimming it. A disk. Sydney’ s disk. The Covenant records she’d been so desperate to procure.

His smile was almost malicious as he tucked it safely into the inside pocket of his trousers. Sydney must have lost it in her struggle with Irina. Perhaps if she asked nicely enough, he would retur itn. After reading it himself, of course. Knowledge was always an asset.

He closed the study door behind him and moved quickly, but silently, down to the holding cells. If Sydney was as good as he knew her to be, she’d be nearly to his storage facility in the left wing by now. He had a very limited amount of time.

Jack Bristow was seated on the narrow bench in the darkened cell as if he had been awaiting Sark’s visit. His face registered no surprise, no gratitude, no annoyance, nothing, as Sark released the door’s locks and swung it open.

“Well?” he asked of the older man, brow raised in cool disregard, when he didn’t move.

Nodding shortly, Jack stood and, though obviously stiff, walked evenly—nearly menacingly—towards where Sark stood. Not that Sark was in the habit of allowing himself to be menaced.

Sark turned before Jack could speak, taking long strides down the hallway, and the sound of Jack’s government-issue shoes on the floor behind him assured Sark the man was following.

“Where are we going?” Jack asked a few terse moments later, as they took another of several impossible turns. The halls here were purposefully serpentine, nearly impossible to navigate unless you already knew them intimately. And he did: he preferred to know the things with which he dealt intimately.

“To find your daughter,” Sark replied neutrally. “We have, however, a brief detour to make.”

“Why are you helping her?”

Her. Sydney, not Jack. A curious choice; a telling assumption. Sark wondered briefly what it must be like to have a father like Jack: one who, for all his flaws, placed his child at the center of his universe.

“It’s not a selfless act, I assure you, Mr. Bristow.”

“I never,” Jack said, “assumed it was.”

He didn’t say anything else, and Sark preferred it that way.

Lauren’s cell was several turns out of their way, but not so far that it jeopardized his chances of intercepting Sydney. He opened her door in much the same way he had Jack’s, but Lauren—young, still emotional, less schooled—snapped her head up, surprise plain and flattering on her sweetly featured face.

“Did I not promise you that you would leave this place unharmed?” he asked her lightly, an undercurrent of emotion in his voice that he failed to conceal.

Jack was watching him closely; Sark ignored him.

He extended a hand to assist Lauren from her seat, and she took it. He pressed a generous fold of bills into her pale slender hands, leaving his pockets empty but for the disk. “Disappear,” he recommended, and felt a surge of satisfaction when she nodded.

 _Smart girl_ , he thought.

“Two rights, and your third left. A back entrance. The way should be clear.”

“I can handle myself,” she told him, chin lifted.

It was his turn to nod, and with one last look into his eyes—what, he wondered, was she hoping to see there?—she turned and headed for the exit, hips swaying.

He watched after her a moment, sure that there should have been more to their parting—but they’d said their farewells the night before, really. This was simply clean up, a resolution that had dragged on past the story’s end.

Jack cleared his throat, and, allowing himself the luxury of a slight grimace, Sark turned.

“Sydney,” Jack reminded him. There was something speculative in his eyes of which Sark was instantly wary. Had he learned that from Irina, or she from him?

Sark indicated his agreement with a stiff nod of his head. Time was short, after all; he couldn’t afford to waste it dwelling on a woman he really barely knew.

A woman, he reflected with a surprisingly healthy degree of self-deprecation and a slight curve to his lips, who, as she left, hadn’t even deigned to look back.

Sydney was quick, and clean; he gave her that. His guards had been summarily dispatched—they lay breathing shallowly at each checkpoint. Some bled, but not fatally. Others appeared merely to be sleeping. If he were her father, he would have felt proud; Jack looked grim.

Sark wondered briefly, severely, with a measure of distaste, what precisely Irina saw in the man. It certainly wasn’t a variety of expression. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he had been meant as a sort of replacement for Jack: “The son I never had,” Irina used to say, a hint of self-mockery rich in her voice. He found himself apprising the man with new eyes. There were worse things, he concluded, than being like Jack Bristow. But Sark was not Irina’s any longer, and Jack Bristow was not the man he wished to be.

“Well?” Jack said, a bitten-off, effective mockery of Sark’s earlier inquiry.

“She’ll be in there.” He indicated the door before them with an inclination of his chin. No sound emerged from the interior of the room, nor had he expected there to. “There’s no other exit.”

“How do you know she hasn’t already come and gone?”

Fair question. “I don’t,” Sark said. “For certain.”

“It’s remarkable that you’ve lived this long,” Jack muttered, to Sark’s mild amusement. Impatience was one of his favorite weaknesses, most likely because it was one he rarely felt the need to give in to.

Still, it behooved him to reach for the door ahead of Jack. Neither of them, however, succeeded. Sark had just enough time to step back before the door flew open and the room’s occupant, Sydney Bristow herself, nearly slammed bodily into him.

Her reflexes, at times, left something to be desired.

There was hesitation on her face—could it be she regretted leaving him as she had?—which turned to shock when she saw Jack.

He couldn’t help the hint of smugness as he greeted her. “Good. You already have it.” As if this was what he had intended all along. He felt satisfaction at the stung look in eyes that had held, if not affection, deep sympathy and mutual understanding mere hours before, but he did not lie to himself, he did not try to tell himself that satisfaction was the uncomplicated pleasure of a man who has bested his adversary. This was something more complex, barbed, deeper: this was something about them, Julian Sark and Sydney Bristow, not the roles they chose to play.

“You took my favorite gun,” he told her, and it broke the tension, told her she had nothing here to fear. He rather wished he had the time to drag to out longer.

She folded her arms. Coolly, she responded, “Didn’t my mother ever teach you not to play favorites?”

Jack grunted from behind him, possibly in amusement.

“Let’s skip the pleasantries, shall we?” he drawled. “I’ve a car waiting.” He paused to savor the moment. “Where does Sloane want you to meet him?”

He wasn’t disappointed. Sydney’s exquisite face paled, then flushed. With fury? With shame? He really was immensely fond of her.

“You knew. You knew that son of a bitch had Vaughn.”

“You never asked me where I disappeared to that night after the club, the night we—”

“Perhaps,” Jack suggested at his most deadpan, “one of you ought to explain to me precisely what is going on.”

“Of course,” Sark said smoothly. “However, may I suggest we do so en route?” His tone shifted, skimmed the line between sincerity and farce. “A man’s life is on the line here, after all.”

Sydney’s eyes held a boiling anger, and however much he enjoyed pushing her buttons, so to speak, her hatred, directed at him, was not something he’d ever wanted from her.

He caught her arm as she moved to brush past. “Sydney,” he said, gently, “I won’t endanger him. I’m here to help you.”

“Forgive me,” she said testily, and he was relieved to see the heat had gone frosty, her hatred for the moment released, “if I find it a little hard to believe you.”

“I released your father,” he told her. “Does that not earn me  _some_  measure of trust?”

“Not trust,” she said, and her eyes echoed,  _Never trust._  Which was acceptable to him; he’d never gone looking for her trust.

“Then what?”

“Time to explain,” she said, her eyes hard, and he—wisely, he thought—let her pass.


	24. Part 5, Act 4

It was Jack who began the interrogation, seated across from him in the back of Sark’s modified town car on the way to Sloane’s chosen meet. Sydney, doubtless knowing everything she ever wanted to know of him and then some, gazed, troubled, out the window, anxiety (he presumed) creasing her forehead. Jack began it with one word, forcefully, evenly delivered: “Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Sark answered glibly, sipping champagne and feeling finer than he had since before he had gone to Sloane three years before with Irina’s offer of partnership.

“Everything we know about you indicates your final loyalty lies with Derevko.”

“Then obviously you do not know enough.” He sipped again once more, the flavor calming him. “The woman traded my whereabouts merely in order to win her way back into her daughter’s good graces. She left me to rot in the same CIA cell I assisted in extracting her from. She betrayed me, Mr. Bristow.”

Which this man, of course, knew everything about. Sark met his eyes steadily, serenely, and was almost flattered when he received a curt nod.

Sydney turned away from the window, leaned towards him, and her voice teetered obviously on the edge of fury as she spoke. “You protected her secrets while in custody.”

She’d read the files, of course. In her quest to understand the time she had lost.  _I would have told them to you, Sydney._  But she hadn’t asked. She hadn’t been there to do so. And now it was too late for such conversations. They had become meaningless, and impossible.

He grimaced, but chose to answer. “Yes.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Old habits,” Jack answered for him, “die hard. Particularly where Irina Derevko is concerned.”

 _Too true_ , Sark thought, but said nothing. It was, he reflected, something all three of them could understand.

“I do wonder,” Jack continued, a coldly assessing gleam in his eyes, “what else drives you. If all you wanted was revenge, you would have brought her down already. You obviously still have her trust.”

 _As much as anyone does,_  Jack didn’t have to say.

“Money,” Sydney said from the window, and there were wells of disgust, if distant, in her voice that startled him. She was gazing out at the passing landscape again, divorcing herself from the conversation taking place. It was likely better for him, her lack of involvement; he had a tendency to say too much where Derevko women were concerned. Though there was little to be lost from full disclosure now.

“Sydney,” and Jack’s eyes narrowed at Sark’s familiar use, “is correct." He sat the glass down, with precision, and leaned back in his seat. “When your daughter informed me of her conversation with Arvin Sloane, I took it upon myself to track him down. I was . . . concerned . . . about his motives.”

He ignored Sydney’s snort.

“I also knew that the nature of his work with the Covenant could put my own aims, to recapture my family fortune, in jeopardy.”

Jack: “You found Sloane, then.”

“It was hardly difficult. I returned to his building—where I was stopped even before I reached the entrance.”

Lending credibility to his suspicion that the whole scenario had been a set-up. To get Sydney there, with Agent Vaughn’s presence a contingency plan. The only thing he still could not grasp was how the man had known Sydney was not, so to speak, herself, but it did not surprise him.

“He could have killed me, I suppose, but he did not.” Nor had he offered him a drink—something Sark took to be a reassuring omen. “He told me had Mr. Vaughn.”

Sark inclined his head towards Sydney in as much apology as he would lower himself to. He cared not one way or the other for the man, but for Sydney he was moved to pity. There had been people he himself had cared about, after all. Their lives had not ended well. 

She refused to acknowledge him.

“He also,” Sark continued, “told me he would not interfere with my work if I assisted Sydney in procuring the disk—and in delivering it to him, in exchange for her paramour, when the time came.”

Jack’s mouth thinned, and by his tone Sark could not determine whether he disapproved of his choice or condoned it. Not that it mattered. “And you agreed.”

Of course he had agreed. “I agreed. The first step was one to which I had already committed myself. And the second, I assumed, I would be able to reevaluate when the time came. An assumption which Sloane anticipated, apparently, as the codes to access my money were incomplete.”

“No wonder you were pissed,” Sydney muttered.

“You believe Sloane has the rest of the access codes,” Jack said.

“I know he does. I received a message this evening.”

Sydney’s eyes narrowed as she turned back towards him. “How?” She was suspicious; he would have been the same, in her place.

“From one of my own men.” The thought still rankled. He’d been so focused on his deception of the Covenant of late that he had unwittingly allowed his control over his small empire to slip somewhat—it was the only explanation he could fathom. His people were loyal; Irina had taught him that. Loyal, and smart enough to know their loyalty was what bought them their lives. He’d have to pay more attention in the future.

Sydney’s eyes were still slitted. “How devastating for you.” She could be nearly as dry as her father, when she so chose.

He was tempted to tell her he’d had the man killed—you couldn’t reward such behavior, it simply wasn’t prudent—but the difficulty of her disgust, the tediousness of her self-righteousness, was not worth the satisfaction he’d gain from making her blanche.

“Sloane’s message?” Jack interrupted. If he hadn’t known better, Sark might have suspected Jack Bristow was irritated with his daughter.

“That I should be prepared to meet the second part of my bargain. That he was prepared to meet his. When Sydney came to my rooms—”

“Sark!”

He smirked. He wouldn’t have finished the sentence; he valued his own life too highly, and he expected Jack Bristow would not take kindly to the idea of his little girl in Julian Sark’s bed, no matter what her purpose in being there. But these explanations were already becoming tiresome. “Suffice it to say, I meant what I said. I will not endanger Mr. Vaughn. I have as much interest in seeing this trade go smoothly as you do.”

“Irina underestimated you,” Jack judged, finally.

“Yes.” And now Sark had lost his advantage. He only hoped he’d used it wisely.

Jack was study him—weighing, no doubt, the details of his story, the likelihood that what he was giving them was the truth. And for once, it was: he was being entirely up front. Sark shifted in his seat to reclaim his glass, and felt the press of the compact data disk against his leg. Well, largely up front.

“Did Sloane give you any indication as to how the trade will proceed?”

Jack had, apparently, accepted the validity of Sark’s tale. A fortunate assessment, especially as this was Sark’s vehicle, Sark’s man driving it, and Sark’s assistance that had gotten them this far. Oh, he had no doubt they would have succeeded without him. Both father and daughter were capable, resourceful. But he hadn’t given them the opportunity, and being who they were—at least, Sydney being who  _she_ was, no matter how much she might spit and threaten—they would feel beholden to him.

He enjoyed that prospect. He was, in fact, beginning to feel more and more like his old self every moment. And very soon he would be independently wealthy, as well, in a manner which made his current assets pale in comparison. He was looking forward to it, to the fruits of his long labor. He’d buy Sydney something, he decided—something too pretty for her to throw away, but which would antagonize her every time she laid eyes on it. He nearly smiled just thinking of it.

“Sloane did not say,” he answered Jack lightly. “But I have no doubts he will play fair. After all, he has no further use for Agent Vaughn. And if, in the future, that were to change, one would presume apprehending him would be as easy a second time.”

“I can’t believe I ever—” Sydney began to say, then stopped, choked, fists clenched, perhaps unsure as to how to finish her sentence. He was curious himself.

“You’ve always known what I am,” he said to her, plainly if somewhat regretfully. It might have been better for her if she had not.

“You—”

“Whatever it is,” Jack Bristow interrupted, “that is keeping the both of you from focusing on the problem at hand, I suggest you put it aside.” His tone made it clear he did not want to know—or did know, and wished he did not. “I don’t have the faith in Arvin that you do, Mr. Sark. If this trade is to happen successfully, there are things we need to establish ahead of time.”

At her father’s words, Sydney straightened in her seat: slowly, visibly, inexorably. When she was of a mind, her self-control rivaled her father’s.

“Of course,” Sark said, turning his attention to the confrontation that lay before them. He folded his hands calmly in his lap, and allowed his mouth to turn up in a smile. “How may I be of assistance?”


	25. Part 5, Act 5

The wind whipped loose hairs across Sydney’s face as she stood, squinting into the sunrise. Sark stood at her left, hands tucked elegantly into his pockets and eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. She felt underdressed, under-prepared. But she wouldn’t let it show.

Her father had them under surveillance from the vehicle a block to the north; better, they had all agreed, that Sloane believe he was only dealing with Sark and Sydney. Sydney hated that it almost felt like professional courtesy.

“He’s late,” Sydney said.

“He has the upperhand.”

“He’s still late.”

Sark made a noise that sounded almost like a snort. “And have you been involved in espionage long?”

She brushed an errant lock out of her eyes, still scanning the streets for Sloane’s arrival. “Shut up.”

The square was beginning to awake: bakeries opening, stalls setting up for business. Women called out to each other in pleasantly familiar greetings; young men raced by on bicycles. Sydney wondered if her mother ever came here, or somewhere like here, to shop, but doubted it. She could picture Laura doing so, but not Irina. She tried to picture it of herself, and couldn’t, and wondered what that meant.

“We look suspicious,” Sydney sighed.

“Better suspicious than dead.”

It had been discussed: the more people noticed them, the more difficult it would be for Sloane to try anything too visible. “Even Arvin Sloane,” Sark had said, “would hesitate to destroy the lives of so many over something so small.” (Though Sydney was not, after hearing her mother’s words, convinced that this was something small at all.) It was paltry protection, this being out in the open, but it was all they had.

 _Playing by Sloane’s rules again,_  Sydney thought. All she ever did was play by someone else’s rules.

She shot a brief glance at Sark. She knew him as little more than a trumped up errand boy, but he was obviously making his own rules now, setting the parameters. She was envious, she realized. The game he played wasn’t one she’d ever choose, but at least it was his own.

But what had it cost him to get to that point? He’d just cut the few ties he’d had: Lauren, the Covenant, Irina. Was that what making your own rules meant in the end? Being alone?

She was distracted by the sound of a car pulling up. Black, sleek, longer than Sark’s.

Sloane’s.

“And the game begins,” Sark murmured, tension threaded through his voice.

 _The game’s been on for awhile,_  Sydney disagreed.

A car door opened and Sloane stepped out, cool and garbed in a light beige suit and crisp white dress shirt that nearly glowed in the morning light. The bottom of his suit rippled in the wind. On his face was a pleasant, welcoming half-smile . . . that could not quite conceal the chill in his eyes.

“Sydney,” he greeted her warmly, and would have, she thought, embraced her if he thought she would have let him. “And Mr. Sark! Excellent work; you have my thanks.”

Sark tilted his head; a dangerous look with which Sydney was well familiar. “And you have my codes.”

Sloane’s smile turned amused, and Sydney was surprised he didn’t chuckle. Two bodyguards flanked him, hefty weapons in their hands. The bustle around the group of them had paused, as if noticing the tension in the center of the square for the first time.

“If Sydney will kindly show that she has the disk, I will give you the other half of your access codes.”

Sydney pulled the slim plastic case from her waistband and held it up. “Where's Vaughn?”

Sloane lifted a hand and the limo door opened again. Two more guards emerged, carrying Vaughn between them. His head bowed low; his body sagged. He looked dejected, defeated . . . but not harmed.

“He’s taken the news about his wife rather hard,” Sloane commented, and Sydney wanted nothing more than to slam her fist through his snotty, squirrelly, smug little face. “Not as hard as your father did, of course. But hard.”

“Let’s just get this over with,” she said, low, terse, and Sloane inclined his head.

“As you wish,” he said, and his tone hardened, rose to reach his men. “Bring him.”

They half-escorted, half-dragged Vaughn forward. He lifted his head—saw her. Mouthed her name half with heartbreak, half with desperation.

“Leave him,” Sloane instructed.

Vaughn staggered, but pulled himself up. He was pale, sweating with the effort, but he remained standing. Sydney’s heart swelled.

Sloane gestured one of the men who had brought Vaughn out of the limo forward. The man extended a plain, letter-sized envelope to Sark, who took it. Sloane remained several feet away, out of easy range. “Your codes have been placed in a safety deposit box is the south of France. The information you need is in that envelope.”

Sark’s head cocked to the side. “How do I know they’ll truly be there?”

“You’ll just have to trust me, Mr. Sark,” Sloane said. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to work together again in the future, and my deceiving you would be an unfavorable start to what could be a profitable business arrangement.”

“You obviously know how to contact me,” Sark said, tucking the envelope into his jacket pocket. Sydney suspected that the comment did not come out as lightly as Sark had wanted it to. But then, she couldn’t claim to have any kind of privileged position when it came to Sark’s intent.

“The disk?” Sloane returned his attention to Sydney.

“Vaughn first,” she said neutrally.

Sloane shook his head. “Don’t make this difficult, Sydney.”

“I’m not the one making it difficult,” she said. But she held the disk out to him.

He reached out to retrieve it himself, and for a moment they stood on either side of the disk, a hand each on the plastic case, connected, as they had always been, by the specter of Rambaldi. And now the specter of Sydney’s sister, Sloane’s daughter. Nadia.

“Don’t—” She struggled to verbalize, struggled to find something she could say that would ensure he wouldn’t hurt her. But there was nothing she could say. Both of them knew it.

Sloane stepped back, with the disk. “I’ve missed you, Sydney,” he said. “Give Jack my best.”

And then he was returning to the car, leaving Sydney and Sark standing there, leaving  _Vaughn_  standing there, nearly dead on his feet he was so weak.

Sloane’s car peeled away in a small cloud of dust and gravel and Sydney ran to Vaughn, catching his weight just before his legs gave way.

“Vaughn,” she breathed, clutching him to her. “Michael.” He was solid, and warm (almost too warm, almost feverish). But safe. Alive. Real. And shaking.

“Sydney,” he said hoarsely. He choked, “Lauren—”

“I know,” she said. The sorrow was a palpable thing between them, and for a moment he was the only thing that existed for her.

The touch of a hand on her shoulder brought Sydney back to her surroundings. She looked at the hand’s owner: a woman, just past middle-aged.

“Doctor?” the woman said, gesturing to Vaughn. The word was in English: guttural, delivered with effort. The woman’s face was drawn with trepidation, but that she had come to them, interlopers, dangerous, at all spoke of a sincere need to help. Something genuine, unsullied, in the midst of all this betrayal and second-guessing, this mess.

Then she realized who should have been standing in her eyeline, but was not. Sark was gone.

She remembered his words earlier when she, for reasons she had yet to untangle, warned him against crossing her mother’s path again.

“Irina will understand,” he had said, and his lips had curved. As if they had some secret game that Sydney was too slow to play. “She won’t like it, but she’ll understand.”

 _Not this time_ , Sydney had thought.

But she didn’t have the concern to waste, and even if she had, he wasn’t the kind of person one wasted it on, whether he deserved it or not. Better that he was gone. Better that this whole thing was over with.

“Thank you,” she said to the woman, “but no.” She shook her head, and made herself a smile. “Thank you,” she said again, and the woman nodded, and stepped back. She looked relieved.

Looking over her shoulder one last time at the spot where Sark had once stood, Sydney wrapped her arm around Vaughn’s waist, draped his over her shoulder, and slowly began to cross the distance between them and the car in which her father waited.

The provincial morning scene they had interrupted had already returned to normal, as if terrorists did blatant, messy business there every other day. Sydney wished that she had the same luxury.


	26. Part 5, Act 6

The machines that monitored Vaughn’s vital signs beeped regularly, reassuringly. The sound should have soothed her, but it only made her remember who had done this, who was responsible for this.  _Sloane._

“He’s dehydrated,” the CIA med had reported. “A little beat up. We want to keep him under for a few more hours, run some tests to be sure. But he’s going to be fine.”

He didn’t say,  _I’ve seen much worse,_ because he knew she’d seen much worse. So had Vaughn. The doctors used to know to expect the other if one was brought in. Now their eyes slid past her, looking for Lauren. They didn’t know yet. They would, soon.

On their return, Dixon had agreed to keep Sydney’s time in Lauren’s body at the highest security level, on a need-to-know basis. Neither she nor her father had mentioned her mother. Only Sark. And Sloane. And Jack had told him about Nadia.

Sydney had not. They hadn’t come to question her yet about her sister, but they would. Everything in her rebelled against telling them, but she had to, of course. Her duty. Her sister. About whom she knew nothing, except that Sloane was after her, and both he and Irina claimed to want to protect her.

What Sydney didn’t know was what from.

Troubled, she watched the rise and fall of Vaughn’s chest through the glass. He’d never know. He’d never know the woman who’d betrayed him in the club, who’d destroyed him by kissing another man and left him chained to a fire escape for Sloane to find, was her. The knowledge, his ignorance, left a heavy, hollow feeling in her stomach, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. What could she possibly say? None of it made sense.

None of it sounded like her.

She pressed her fingers to her temples, a brief moment in which let weakness overtake her. The struggle she engaged in with her tears was almost a relief. At least she was focused on something she could handle, on a fight she could win.

She didn’t even know what to do now. The data disk was gone; she’d searched her clothing frantically when she’d discovered it missing, but had since forced herself to accept its loss. She had no leads. Sark had taken back his money, or what was left of it, and the Covenant was in shambles; that, at least, had almost made her smile. She couldn’t hunt down Sloane—she’d tried, and failed, so many times—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find her mother. The CIA would be looking for her sister. That was something she could be of some use in, she was sure of it. And if they were going to drag Nadia into this, Sydney needed to be there. To protect her.

No one had even noticed the Rambaldi disk was missing until she and her father had told them—Marshall had been using a sample taken off of it before the transfer to investigate a possible link between the artifact and Sydney’s coma—and so no one had seen “Sydney” breaking in and stealing it. Sydney wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. Lauren was good. Or at least good enough not to get caught.

Sark had let her go, Jack had said. It made Sydney livid that that woman was walking free, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Except take care of Vaughn.

Her father approached her as she stood, staring blindly through the glass at the man she loved, and fell into place beside her, studying her profile. “You should get some sleep,” he said neutrally, just the faintest hint of gruffness in his voice. She’d learned to treasure those undertones, the things that were always almost said.

“I know,” she said, instead of,  _I’m fine._

Hesitantly, his arm came around her—he was still so uncertain when it came to touching her. As his hand came to rest, she leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder, let him be her strength. She felt his muscles relax.

“Dad,” she said, looking up at him and pushing her hair behind her right ear, activating the bug killer in her slim gold hoops, “why didn’t you tell Dixon and Kendall about Mom?”

“Your mother and I,” he said, and there was a cold glint in his eye that took her back to days when she wasn’t so sure of him, days when she thought he was the Bad Guy, and half-wanted to turn out to be right, “have some unfinished business.” He was silent a moment, as was she, the bug killer securing only empty air. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, worried all over again. “I guess I didn’t like the idea of Sloane being out there, unchallenged, looking for my sister.”

The device in her earring beeped twice, signaling for them to cut their conversation off.

“Go home,” Jack said to her. “I’ll call if there’s any change.”

She swallowed, and nodded, and pulled away from his embrace. Leaning up, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. She felt him tense—just slightly, in surprise, possibly bemusement—as she lowered back to the floor.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said.

With one last look at Vaughn, still motionless on the hospital bed, she picked up her purse and started the slow walk down the hall to the exit and her car.

*

There was a package waiting for her on her kitchen table.

Immediately she pulled the gun from her shoulder holster and secured the apartment. No signs of forced entry, no evidence of anyone having been there at all except for the box, constructed of unmarked cardboard and packing tape. It didn’t have to say her name on it for her to know it was hers.

She also didn’t need a “From” label to know who sent it.

She opened it cautiously, bomb-defusing tools within reach and cell ready to dial the office, Marshall’s extension, with the push of a single button. But there was nothing suspicious inside. At least not security-wise. The box held, well-cushioned, a smaller box, white and tied with a translucent, glittery silver ribbon. The bow was tied precisely; she could, to her dismay, imagine clearly the hands that had tied it in smooth, even motions.

There was a note.

 _Dearest Sydney,_ it read.  _Please accept the enclosed as a token of my gratitude. Till next we meet over the barrel of your gun— Yours, Julian._

She had to open it; she didn’t have a choice. And then she had to take whatever it was in to Marshall and see what he could discover: where it was from, or who made it, and whether those pieces of information could in any way lead them to Sark. She doubted it. But it didn’t change the process.

She untied the ribbon, slit the round, gold seal that the bow had previously concealed and folded the top open. Nestled inside was a simple necklace: diamonds dripped delicately at its bottom, and the links of the chain, finely, intricately wrought, curled like silk over her fingers as she lifted it to catch the light. It was, without a doubt, the most expensive thing she had ever held in her hands—or rather, held in her hands that did not belong to the government, or the Alliance, or (though she did not remember, of course) the Covenant. It was only then, with the light glinting languorously off the stones, that she recognized the configuration. It matched her mother’s earrings.

Sydney blew out a breath and held the necklace close in to her chest. She couldn’t keep it. She didn’t  _want_ to keep it. And yet . . .

She hadn’t wanted to keep her mother’s earrings. No, that was a lie. She had wanted to keep them more than anything. And knowing that pierced her through—because her mother had betrayed her, had betrayed her father, the CIA, all over again. Sydney had been angry— _furious_ —and heartbroken. But she’d clung to those earrings as if they were a lifeline. They were the evidence of the only real, true thing her mother had ever done for her. They were gone now, destroyed like everything else in the fire the night she’d been taken, so it didn’t matter, in the end. At the time, though, she’d wished, so badly, to not want them. She just couldn’t give them up.

She couldn’t give this up either.

 _Damn it._ She blinked back tears.

Carefully, she set the necklace back into its box—Marshall would want to take a look at that as well, check for any traces of the man who had packed it—and only then did she see the thin silver disk that had lay below it, a visual echo of the box’s seal.

Her heart stuttered; her breath caught in anger, and with the sudden urge to  _laugh._

That was where her data disk had gone.

She nearly dropped the necklace in her haste. Fingers trembling, she snatched the disk up, found her reader and fumbled it inside. It was blank. She stared at it, dumbfounded. Blank.

Taking it back out, heart wooden, stomach hollow, she noticed at last the etching on the other side. She had to look through three drawers before she found a magnifying glass, then sat down at the bar to study it. The etchings were words. A second message. From Sark.

 _La Albufereta,_ it read.  _Southern end. 9:30 Tuesday._

That  _bastard_.

She clutched the disk so hard her hand began to throb. He had her data. He’d  _taken_ her data. And now he was dangling it before her like she was some sort of animal. After she’d . . .

And of course he would give it back—for a price.

Sydney picked up her cell, scrolled through the address book until she reached D.

  
“Dad?” she said, voice preternaturally calm. “I need a visa and a plane ticket to Spain. The CIA can’t recognize the name.”


	27. Part 5, Act 7

At the airport, she’d almost turned back. Vaughn was sick, weak, unconscious; he needed her. And she was heading across the world to trade barbs with Sark. And for what? Some files that  _might_  tell her more about who she’d been, what she’d done, during two years that she could hardly even bear to think about?

But knowing  _mattered_. She couldn’t help it. Miserably, she had boarded the plane, and now she stood, nearly trembling with anger already, as Sark approached, a pale figure in the distance.

“Sydney,” he greeted her genially, “how good of you to come.”

Her voice, when she answered, was flat. “You didn’t give me a choice.”

“I’m very sorry I missed the part where I knocked you out, bound you, and brought you here against your will.” He seemed mildly amused. “And I so would have enjoyed seeing you in handcuffs.”

She gritted her teeth. “Cut the crap, Sark.”

He nodded. “Very well, then. I have something for you, of course.”

The wind ruffled through his hair, but he remained unperturbed, perfectly serious, consummately professional—the perfect contrast to the way she felt: emotional, scattered, put together all wrong.

“Just tell me what you want in exchange,” she said, suddenly weary.

Surprise registered on his features: the slight raise of eyebrows, the openness of his gaze. “Nothing, Sydney. I only wanted a share of the knowledge I helped retrieve.” He slipped a CD from his inside jacket pocket before she would even reach for the gun she wasn’t carrying, and passed it to her. “It’s yours.”

 _When the actions are the same, it’s the reasons that matter._ It was something Vaughn had said to her, back when she was with SD-6 and wracked with doubt about the work she was going, with confusion about who she was and what the horrible things she did meant.

Looking at Sark, she wondered—not about his reasons, not about his justifications, but about her own. What was all of this about? Why had she really come here? Why had she let herself go with him to begin with? Indulgence? Punishment? And if it was punishment—punishment for who? Herself? Vaughn?

Everything she’d felt since she’d come back was harder, richer, more painful, less easy to discern from the dark swirling vacuum of her missing two years. It had been easier, since Kendall had told her what he had—the puzzle pieces had begun to fall into place. But there was still something missing. Something, she prayed, that was on the disk she now held in her hand. Something that would make this all mean something.

She looked up at Sark, studying the smooth, earnest expression he presented for her perusal. “You could have just sent me this,” she said, an echo of earlier conversations. “There has to be something else.”

He cocked his head to the side. “You only slept with me,” he said after a few moments pause in which her blood had gone cold in her veins, “in order to steal my ID card.”

 _No_. “Yes,” she said.

He nodded his head, in grim satisfaction. “One cannot fault your honesty, can they?”

She wrapped her arms around her body, looking away from him.

She realized, in the empty silence that followed, that she hadn’t expected him to let it go. She had expected him to badger her until she admitted to having enjoyed it (something she would never, ever do), or to ridicule her guilt, when the last deal they’d made found her trading Sloane’s life for Vaughn’s without a second thought. She never would have expected him to take her answer at face value.

“Sydney,” he said instead. “On that disk . . .” His voice trailed off. “According to those files, the Covenant sent an agent after the disc we retrieved over a year ago, but were unable to procure the artifact. It wasn’t the only such instance. And of course agents, and agencies, fail to achieve their mission objectives all the time. Reading the reports, they appeared random. But knowing what I know now, I was able to discern a pattern quite quickly.”

She fold her arms, in annoyance. “What are you getting at?”

“The failed operative’s name, in nearly every case, was Julia Thorne.”

She swallowed, hard and dry. “I was working for the CIA,” she said numbly. “Of course I would have sabotaged Covenant missions.”

He listed off a handful of words that meant nothing to her. “Sound familiar?" He must have seen by her face that she had not. “The Covenant doesn’t have them. And neither does the CIA. I did some checking, Sydney. Arvin Sloane has nearly every single one.”

Her mouth tasted like ashes; it was as if the world had gone completely gray. She stared at him as if he’d just told her the world was ending: stunned disbelief, sheer panic. “I couldn’t have been working with Sloane.” Her voice was high and hoarse with strain.

“No,” Sark agreed. “They’re all recent acquisitions. I believe that you were working against him, and without the knowledge of the CIA.”

She shook her head in denial. No.  _No._ Because that meant—

“I know about your sister, Sydney,” he said. “Don’t look so surprised. It was in the files: the Passenger, her connection to the Chosen One. And with Sloane’s recent tactics, and Irina’s . . . personal interest . . . . I simply put it together. You have the files. You’ll see the truth in what I’m telling you soon enough.”

He smiled, just slightly, the edge of his mouth tugged crookedly to the side. It looked sardonic, and sad. Why was he telling her this? Why did he care?

“It seems, Agent Bristow, that as Julia you likely knew precisely where the disk was and what it was for. Moreover, you knew of your sister. And in light of recent events, I can only assume it was her life which you removed your memories to protect.”

She heard the implication only too well: now, her rash act had put her sister in danger all over again.

“You mother,” Sark remarked, “would be pleased.”

“I don’t care if Irina is pleased.” All she cared about was getting to Nadia first, before Sloane could. Her grip tightened on the CD in her right hand. And hopefully this disk would be enough to help her do it.

Sark was still watching her: carefully, with restraint. Sark, who had kidnapped her, made her . . . who had been accessory to so much of her pain, but without whose help she wouldn’t be in possession of the disk and the information on it in the first place. She wouldn’t know about her sister. Or, if he was telling the truth, what she had really sacrificed those two years to protect.

“I’m . . . sorry,” she said to him, as sincerely as she knew how.

“For sleeping with me? Sydney, please.”

Sydney smiled wanly, and his mouth twitched in response. And there was a moment in which she felt she ought to say more—the hesitation must have been plain on her face—but it passed, and she was back to herself, her responsibilities heavy on her.

Uncomfortably, she said, “I ought to go.”

He reached out, grabbed her wrist. “A parting gift,” he said—and kissed her.

His mouth pressed against hers almost chastely, in comparison to their previous encounters, but she found herself leaning into him, parting her lips, accepting his tongue with open mouth and his body, familiar, warm in the wind off the water, with everything else. Her hands clenched in the front of his shirt.

He pulled back first, but only slightly.

“You can’t imagine I wanted that,” she whispered, a hair’s breadth from his lips.

“I didn’t say it was a gift for you.” He took a step back, and she released him. “Until next time, Sydney,” he said.

She pressed her lips together; she could still taste him. It was all too surreal: the unstable sand beneath her feet, the sound of the waves rushing in her ears. The houses beyond them, behind them, were silent and still.

“Take care of yourself, Sark.” She almost didn’t recognize her own voice.

He nodded, obviously pleased, and she watched him walk away. It unnerved her to realize, once he was out of sight, that she hadn’t even thought about putting a bullet in his back. Or at least the back of his kneecap.

But there were other things to concern herself with. Vaughn was waiting for her.

So was her sister.

<end>


End file.
